Sometime around 1966, a US court ruled that nudist magazines showing full male frontals
were not obscene unless sexually explicit. Typical for us Americans, someone was ready
to make a buck. One such was an outfit called Wyngate & Bevins which began publishing
"nudist" magazines that were really nothing more than gay beefcake with lots of frontal nudity.
Until full liberalization two or three years later, they had a near monopoly
on legal male frontal nudity. So today is Wyngate & Bevins day.
Although contrived to comply with the "nudist magazine" ruling, I always find the slight air of innocence rather delightful. Cute buff guys hanging out..
ReplyDeleteThey often appeared to really be having fun.
DeleteI mean, physique modeling may have been just a front for male prostitution, but it genuinely looks fun in a way that modern porn, for the most part, doesn't. It's not even just a W&B thing either: All those silly costumes, props used in absurd ways...I know you don't like John Manning, but the fact that his Indian getup was something he actually requested is hilariously absurd.
DeleteAnother thing I should mention about physique models: They were literal whores, but they would either let you suck them or let you watch them jerk off. No bottoming, because they were "straight". (I mean, they said heterosexual; in those days, straight referred to men who had stopped having sex with men, "going straight".)
This era I like to call the postwar era or the physique era, from 1945 to 1969. One was only a homosexual if one was a bottom, so males often masturbated together furtively, meeting at the YMCA, where guys swam nude. Closeted bourgeois gay men had their own bars in their basements, and I've actually lived in two houses that had this particular vestige of this era.
It's frankly a fascinating era because of this juxtaposition of extreme repression with gay sex being invisible yet everywhere.
Chrysler Imperial in the background with the flite-sweep trunk deck.
ReplyDeleteW&B we’re making a good living….:)