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![Buying Gay](/assets/artwork/1x1-42817eea7ade52607a760cbee00d1495.gif)
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Buying Gay
How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement
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- USD 25.99
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- USD 25.99
Descripción editorial
In 1951, a new type of publication appeared on newsstands—the physique magazine produced by and for gay men. For many men growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, these magazines and their images and illustrations of nearly naked men, as well as articles, letters from readers, and advertisements, served as an initiation into gay culture. The publishers behind them were part of a wider world of “physique entrepreneurs”: men as well as women who ran photography studios, mail-order catalogs, pen-pal services, book clubs, and niche advertising for gay audiences. Such businesses have often been seen as peripheral to the gay political movement. In this book, David K. Johnson shows how gay commerce was not a byproduct but rather an important catalyst for the gay rights movement.
Offering a vivid look into the lives of physique entrepreneurs and their customers, and presenting a wealth of illustrations, Buying Gay explores the connections—and tensions—between the market and the movement. With circulation rates many times higher than the openly political “homophile” magazines, physique magazines were the largest gay media outlets of their time. This network of producers and consumers helped foster a gay community and upend censorship laws, paving the way for open expression. Physique entrepreneurs were at the center of legal struggles, especially against the U.S. Post Office, including the court victory that allowed full-frontal male nudity and open homoeroticism. Buying Gay reconceives the history of the gay rights movement and shows how consumer culture helped create community and a site for resistance.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this intelligent work, historian Johnson (The Lavender Scare) explores what he terms "the Physique Era" in American gay history, spanning 1951 through 1967, when now nearly forgotten bodybuilding beefcake magazines fostered a virtual community for gay men. Johnson makes a compelling case that, in contrast to the academic tendency to dismiss physique magazines as mere artifacts of closeted life, physique entrepreneurs went on to found other businesses and ultimately created "a gay market, by and for gay people" that "was crucial to the emergence and success of a gay movement," wedding capitalism and social justice. The book profiles various enterprises, among them the bodybuilding magazine Physique Pictorial; the Cory Book Service, a gay book of the month club; the Grecian Guild, a gay social fraternity; the Adonis club, a pen pal service; Lynn Womack's physique periodical and gay novel publishing and distribution "empire"; and Directory Services, Inc., which provided gay business directories (for example, lists of gay bars) and later furniture, books, greeting cards, and photo developing services, becoming profitable enough to finance (and win) a legal fight for the right to free expression in 1967. Johnson draws on archival evidence and original interviews in prose that remains accessible even as it demonstrates his scholarly chops. This excellent history brings to light a little-known subject with a well-supported, unusual argument. Illus.