Courting the Pink Pound

Men Only and the Queer Consumer, 1935-39

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4494030
AutoresJustin Bengry (University of California, Santa Barbara, autor de correspondencia)
Año2009
Volumen68
Número1
Páginas122-148
Fecha de publicación2009-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaHistory Workshop Journal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1363-3554 • E-ISSN: 1477-4569
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/hwj/dbp006
PMID20027700
OpenAlexW2022062662
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas13
Referencias citadas7

Men Only was among the earliestmen’s lifestyle magazines published in Britain. From its first issue, in December 1935, the magazine cultivated a mainstream audience of middle-class, presumably heterosexual male consumers. But at the same time, I argue, it addressed and courted another audience long associated with urban leisure and fashionable consumption. References to homosexuality in Men Only went beyond mockery and insults directed at effeminate men. Instead, both textual and visual references to subcultural codes, practices, and homoerotically charged situations all reinforced potential readings of the magazine that would be understood by a queer audience. Other readers sometimes decoded the magazine’s references and doublespeak too. Some even expressed concern that particularmagazine elements were ‘a trifle pansy’. But by printing such concerns the magazine producers further highlighted Men Only’s complicated dual address. By 1939, however, as the magazine’s references to homosexuality and urban queer subcultures became increasingly dated and less lucrative, it began to direct its attention to a new military and home front audience. This article argues that through the deft use of humour, imagery,and coded doublespeak, Men Only courted a homosexual market segment a full half century before advertisers and marketers would openly acknowledge and seek the Pink Pound.

Advertising · Audience measurement · Consumption (sociology) · Homosexuality · Mainstream · Media studies · Political science · Pound (networking) · Queer · Social science · Sociology · White (mutation) · Decadence, Literature, and Society · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Gender Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law