It's Pride Month, so today I'm posting some images of gay life before liberation. Most of these are well documented as gay, but some like this one are not to my knowledge. However, it doesn't take a genius to look at this picture and get the drift. Not a woman in sight, but plenty of fine beef.
Nice, it's too bad we don't have a provenance, or at least a location. Just near water.
ReplyDeleteThe sailor caps make me think USA. The only other clue of any sort is the bathing suit at far right. It was a popular style from the early 1930s, but no one else is wearing one, so it may have been out of date. Or the absence of women may have caused the usual dress code to be loosened. Either way, it's a great picture.
DeleteAnd the second one from the left has a full body unitard (also so 30's...)
DeleteI missed that one. The color looks like skin.
DeleteI think it should be noted that these were the "respectable" (white, upper-middle-class, suburban, gender-conforming, likely closeted and may have even gone to a psychoanalyst to be "cured") queers.
ReplyDeleteLess respectable queers met at bars like Stonewall, places owned by the mafia, because they were shut out of safer spaces.
There was definitely a two-tiered system going on.
Isn't there always?
DeleteEspecially in the 50s and 60s. But hey, Stonewall's now a national monument, and most of the safe places have faded into obscurity.
Delete…wie eine Szene im Berlin vor der Nazizeit oder die Riviera zwischen den Kriegen.
ReplyDeleteIf I had to guess, I'd say the Riviera.
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