The book shows how these editors were receptive to readers’ feedback. įorrester Millard and John Miller, Physique Pictorial, June 1954 Bob Mizer signaled that Physique Pictorial would offer something different by featuring images of two men in posing straps, their arms draped over one another (courtesy the Bob Mizer Foundation).īuying Gay is about more than the worship of the male body as a mere object of beauty: It details how physique magazine publishers fostered burgeoning communities by, for example, starting pen-pal clubs and gatherings that allowed readers to interact with photographers and editors and with one another. Perhaps the most entrepreneurial artist was Bob Mizer : starting out as a photographer, he founded the Athletic Model Guild and, by 1951, founded the magazine Physique Pictorial. Alfonso Hanagan, also known as “Lon of New York,” was Quaintance’s mentor, and had been photographing bodybuilders since moving to New York in 1936.
Virginia-born, George Quaintance, who was a photographer, painter, and illustrator whose homoerotic artwork, whether it was set in a ranch or in a Grecian bathhouse, was meant to convey a sense of camaraderie. (His art adorns clothing lines, and towels there is a foundation in his name, and his recent biopic is a balanced tribute to him.) Perhaps for this very reason, Johnson doesn’t dwell too much on his legacy, making room for other visual artists.
Among mainstream audiences, Finnish illustrator Tom of Finland is perhaps the best known artist in this category. Johnson introduces us to the artists who created physique-adjacent artworks. The proliferation of bodybuilding contests, both local and national, depended on a large gay fan base. The gyms, contests, and magazines surrounding bodybuilding were another such public space that gay men actively, if cautiously, appropriated. “Gay men in the early twentieth century were adept at appropriating urban public spaces for their own purposes, whether bars, public parks, Turkish baths, or the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA),” writes Johnson. Physique magazines, after all, were a byproduct of the turn-of-the-century investment in physical culture, which developed among middle-class men in urbanizing areas, across the spectrum of sexual orientations. Sure, they celebrated an aesthetic that rejected any form of effeminacy. The most apparent way, for those invested in the visual arts, is his aesthetic analysis of the tropes of physique magazines. While he had to delay falling into these particular rabbit holes to focus on his work in progress, eventually returning to them led him to write Buying Gay, a history of the seminal importance that physique magazines had for the gay community in the United States between the end of World War II and the Stonewall riots.īuying Gay is a thorough, and extremely entertaining read that delights in several ways anyone remotely interested in the subject matter.
#Gay men magazine subscription manual
Amid the government documents he stumbled upon at the home of an activist, he also found Drum, Physique Pictorial, and MANual - magazines that unabashedly celebrated the statuesque beauty of the male body. Johnson was conducting research on what would become his book Lavender Scare (now a documentary film ), a history of the conflict between the US government and its homosexual population, which was considered as dangerous a threat to national security as communists. Johnson’s Buying Gayīack in the 1990s, historian David K.