D avid K. J ohnson . Buying Gay

David K. Johnson’s new book, Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement, explores many fascinating ways that print culture, especially homoerotic “physique” magazines, contributed to the growth of gay male community building, identity formation, and political consciousness during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Often downplayed by scholars as a distraction from the more “serious” work of early gay civil rights—that is, “homophile”—organizations, Buying Gay demonstrates how publications emphasizing male beefcake, brawn, and beauty played an essential role in bringing gay men into a stronger sense of national community after World War II. The book also documents how a postwar cohort of “activist entrepreneurs” fought important legal battles over obscenity and censorship that paved the way for more open expressions of gay male desire in the following decades. At the heart of Buying Gay is a loose network of physical fitness magazines that, starting in the late 1940s, increasingly...

Aesthetics · Art · Beauty · Censorship · Consciousness · Gay rights · Identity (music) · Media studies · Political consciousness · Political science · Politics · Sociology · American History and Culture · European history and politics · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Psychology