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A Hint of Homosexuality: 'Gay' and Homoerotic Imagery in American Print Advertising
by Bruce H. Joffe
Xlibris
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There are books for which the world has waited, that are so obviously needed that it's amazing they've not come out sooner. Count among these Bruce H. Joffe's A Hint of Homosexuality: 'Gay' and Homoerotic Imagery in American Print Advertising (Xlibris, 214 pages, $19.95) . It's no surprise that sex is the main impetus of advertising, with both males and females objects as well subjects. If men are presented as "sexy" to women, how do they look to gay men? And how does the fact gay men are looking change the meaning of the imagery for everyone? For anyone who's watched advertising in recent decades, these are live questions. All those Bruce Weber photos for Calvin Klein ads? Totally queer -- well, actually less queer than totally gay. Marky Mark ( née Mark Wahlberg) in tight briefs? Who did they think was looking at that bulge? The impact of a gay sensibility on print advertising is taken for granted now, the same way that the racy girl-talk on Sex and the City has made female-centered eroticism a commonplace in film and TV.

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But the great surprise in A Hint of Homosexuality is not that ads from Calvin Klein or Absolut are homoerotic. Rather it's how deep the homoeroticism runs in 20th-century American advertising.

Not that this has been a complete secret. The late Allan Bérubé uncovered and wrote about Canon towel ads from the 1940s that featured nearly naked soldiers and sailors in provocative poses as a means to sell bath-towels to presumably female consumers. These ads -- shocking to us now in their conspicuous display of male flesh and sexualized poses and narratives -- were widely published in national magazines. And students of American illustration probably know about J.C. Leyendecker, the noted commercial artist of the 1920s who invented the Arrow Collar man -- an advertising icon as famous as the Marlboro Man would be in the '70s and '80s. Arrow Collar man's broad shoulders, thick neck, handsome face, and impeccable clothing marked him as much as a queen as a man on the move. (Indeed, Arrow's signature detachable collar was a sign of lower- and middle-class mobility.) Many of these Arrow Collar men were depicted with equally attractive and well-dressed male companions.

Joffe reproduces both the Canon towel and Leyendecker ads here, and has dug up a plethora of others. There's a remarkable Anheuser-Bush ad from 1905 that portrays Zeus disguised as an eagle snatching up a winsome and naked Ganymede. Did anyone realize that the Greek myth upon which this is based has been an iconic gay narrative for millennia? There are also Ivory Soap ads showing men and boys bathing naked in streams and pools, as well as Ivory Soap ads of naked men in locker rooms and communal showers. Oh, and Ivory Soap ads of naked Boy Scouts as well. This is all in the chapter "Keeping it Clean: The Ivory Soap Years." Apparently there was a lot to keep cleaning up, and it's unclear exactly why.

Needless to say, B.V.D. ads feature prominently here, mostly from the 1920s, and they're amazing. "Welcome to Camp B.V.D." reads one ad, showing men gracefully lounging about looking each other over. There are other underwear ads as well -- companies we no longer know, such as Topkis (!) and Sealpax. In one promotion Sealpax asserts that it's "A Better Athletic Underwear Sold in a Cleaner Way." Well, not in these ads.

World War II marked an uptick in homoerotic content. Apparently those guys were fighting for more then democracy. Beer and cigarette ads showed men drinking and smoking together, while gazing into one another's eyes. Schlitz's "cowboy" campaign, started in 1948, was a precursor to the Marlboro man. The ads featured manly, post-war cowboys -- this was the age of the great Hollywood westerns and the advent on TV of shows such as Gunsmoke and Have Gun Will Travel -- and the first words of the advertising copy is "I was curious...." (Curious, that is, as to why "Schlitz is the Beer that Made Milwaukee Famous.")

Of course, the looming question is... did they know what they were doing? Was it intentional? Or is this simply reading too deeply into what were commonplace images from a time when gender was something different from what it is now? Joffe is circumspect -- which is how it should be; pronouncements of any certainty would certainly be wrong. What Joffe does best here is describe the ads, their background and context. He might have gone further with a broader analysis -- there are times when he seems to imply that gender presentation has been static in 20th-century America and that these ads have readily decodable, trans-historical meanings. And too often he goes for the laugh line (usually funny) in his descriptions, when a more gingerly approach would have sufficed. But whatever its occasional stutters, A Hint of Homosexuality is a great book you'll devour in one sitting but whose words and images will stay with you long after.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com