Dunno if it has been posted before but I thought some of you might find it interesting
" Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1999 07:33:31 EDT
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Subject: AEJ 99 DenhamB MAG Sexual mores in the Weider muscle building
course of the 1950's
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EDUCATION FOR THE BODYBUILDER OR ALIBI FOR THE PUBLISHER? SEXUAL MORES IN THE WEIDER MUSCLE BUILDING COURSE OF THE 1950s By Bryan E. Denham, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Communication and Mass Media Southwest Missouri State University 901 South National Avenue Springfield, MO 65804 (417) 836-4156 E-mail: [log in to unmask] Paper submitted to the Magazine Division, AEJMC National Conference, August 1999, New Orleans EDUCATION FOR THE BODYBUILDER OR ALIBI FOR THE PUBLISHER? SEXUAL MORES IN THE WEIDER MUSCLE BUILDING COURSE OF THE 1950s Abstract Joe Weider has been involved with bodybuilding since the late 1930s, and today he operates a health and fitness empire in Woodland Hills, California. His organization produces exercise equipment, nutrition supplements, books, and magazines, such as Muscle & Fitness, Flex, Shape and Men's Fitness. This essay looks back to the 1950s and examines the sexual mores he advanced in a mail-order course designed for young men interested in weightlifting. As discussed in the paper, substantial differences existed across the glossy magazines that he produced for gay men throughout the 1950s and his mainstream mail-order course, published late in that decade. The information in Sex Education for the Bodybuilder, the publication examined here, is linked on a conceptual level to contemporary queer theory, in that the normative and deviant sexual activities discussed in it seem to reflect perfectly the social constructs and norms of the time, while differing markedly from those of today. EDUCATION FOR THE BODYBUILDER OR ALIBI FOR THE PUBLISHER? SEXUAL MORES IN THE WEIDER MUSCLE BUILDING COURSE OF THE 1950s In the late 1940s and early 50s, a dramatic change took place in the way scantily clad men appeared in mass-mediated publications. For the first time, magazines appeared that sought to do just one thing: Celebrate the male physique solely for its aesthetic appeal (Hooven, 1995; Waugh, 1996). In the decades prior, pictures of men performing rigorous outdoor tasks and lifting weights did appear, chiefly in magazines such as Physical Culture by Bernarr Macfadden (Ernst, 1991), and Vim by Joe and Ben Weider (Waugh, 1996), but the men always had a reason, or "alibi," for showing off their muscles. Not until amateur photographer Bob Mizer of Southern California began photographing well-sculpted Hollywood hopefuls did photos published almost exclusively for gay men appear. Mizer started taking these photographs in 1948, and when his attempt to establish a modeling agency, the Athletic Model Guild, failed to materialize, he may have assumed his stint as a talent scout was over. In fact, just the opposite occurred; the demand for his photographs increased dramatically, and by 1952 he had his own magazine, Physique Pictorial (Hooven, 1995; Waugh, 1996). As Hooven (1995) explained, "It had no editorials or articles, no ads for hair restorers or wheat germ, just images of the male physique, as near to nude as the law would allow" (p. 32). "The question was," Hooven (1995) asked, "who would want to take or publish photos of men for their physical attractiveness except a homosexual? In other words, what Mizer and the others did was all but unthinkable for that day and age-they came out" (p. 54). Indeed, with more than 100 publications appearing at one point (Waugh, 1996), physique magazines emerged throughout the 1950s. As Hooven (1995) noted, "Without presenting anything overtly homosexual, each issue was so clearly designed by and for gay men it was obvious to even the youngest and most inexperienced of them" (p. 72). The magazines, in short, were not simply a part of gay culture, "they virtually were gay culture" (p. 74). Canadian Joe Weider, who had published bodybuilding magazines throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s, and who continues today at the helm of magazines such as Muscle & Fitness and Flex, observed how well publications such as Physique Pictorial were doing. By 1952, Hooven (1995) noted, Weider had altered the photos in his own bodybuilding magazines, specifically American Manhood, to focus on slimmer, more handsome males in posing briefs that accentuated the genitalia. Waugh (1996) shed light on the movement to which Weider had become attached: At its peak, between 1955 and 1965, the 'physique' movement comprised a vast international network through which circulated thousands of magazines, mail-order photographs, and films, not to mention subsidiary merchandise. The entire operation was predicated on bodybuilding as a channel-and at the same time a camouflage-for the sexualized male body. Despite its fundamental disavowal of our desire for those taut pectorals and disarming grins, the first commercial and popular incarnation of gay culture in the age of modern mass media is a key to the formation of contemporary gay identities, cultures, politics, and sexualities (pp. 176-177). In addition to American Manhood, Weider went on to publish magazines such as Body Beautiful, Adonis, Young Adonis, and Young Physique, all geared toward gay men. As Waugh (1996) noted, Weider recognized early on the potential profits in gay-oriented publications, and as a publisher, he was so adept that he easily surpassed others, bringing to light the present study. In the late 1950s, Weider offered young men interested in weightlifting a mail-order course on fundamental training techniques. As part of his "Muscle Building Series," he produced a supplemental publication addressing human sexuality. This study explores the sexual mores advanced in his booklet Sex Education for the Bodybuilder (1958). The study reveals the disparity between the glossy magazines he produced for gay men and the generic mail-order course he produced for young men interested in weightlifting. In the former, for instance, editors searched for ways to make posing briefs "cling" to the genitalia; in the latter, Weider advised that masturbating was not something a young man in pursuit of physical strength did. Thus, while gay men may have looked to Weider's magazines for titillation, subscribers to the "Muscle Building Series" received advice that smacked of sexual repression, perhaps to be expected given that time period (Loughery, 1998; Chauncey, 1994). Theoretically, this paper is grounded in queer theory, which, in the early 1990s, grew out of scholarship addressing how normative and deviant sexual behaviors are created through a socially constructed process (for example, Jagose, 1997). Klages (1997) provides an explanation of the theory and how it evolved: Queer theory emerges from gay/lesbian studies' attention to the social construction of categories of normative and deviant sexual behavior . . . Queer theory looks at, and studies, and has a political critique of, anything that falls into normative and deviant categories, particularly sexual activities and identities. The word "queer," as it appears in the dictionary, has a primary meaning of 'odd,' 'peculiar,' 'out of the ordinary.' Queer theory concerns itself with any and all forms of sexuality that are "queer" in this sense-and then, by extension, with the normative behaviors and identities which define what is "queer" (by being their binary opposites) . . . Queer theory insists that all sexual behaviors, all concepts linking sexual behaviors to sexual identities, and all categories of normative and deviant sexualities, are social constructs, sets of signifiers which create certain types of social meaning . . . For queer theorists, sexuality is a complex array of social codes and forces, forms of individual activity and institutional power . . . (pp. 1-2). Scholars have used similar theories in studies of normative and deviant sexual behaviors and sexual identities among bodybuilders. For example, Gillett and White (1992) employed a critical feminist perspective and concluded that hypermasculine physiques among bodybuilders represent attempts by men to restore and maintain feelings of self-control and self-worth. The authors argue that the muscular male physique is constructed by social relations etched in gender ideology (see also, Messner & Sabo, 1990). An additional study by White and Gillett (1994) examined photographs in Flex, a Weider bodybuilding magazine. They noted that the muscular male body was considered natural and desirable, the product of ideologies in gender difference. The authors concluded that the portrayal of the muscular body as ideal offered resistance to progressive change and alternative masculinities, something Klein (1989) had observed in a long-term ethnographic study of the Southern California bodybuilding culture (see also, Klein, 1993). Klein (1989) studied the practice of "hustling" among male bodybuilders, concluding that while many bodybuilders offered sexual favors to gay men, their behavior in the gym was anything but indicative of homosexuality. In fact, Klein concluded that in order to maintain perceptions of heterosexuality, bodybuilders often engaged in homophobic behavior. In a study on the rising popularity of bodybuilding during the early 1980s, Klein (1987) observed that bodybuilders often related to members of the outside world in an arrogant manner in order to conceal deep-rooted feelings of inferiority. Klein has published other studies (1986, 1985a, 1995b) that reveal many contradictions in the way bodybuilders present themselves - namely, their sexual identities and social behaviors-and the way things really work. The term "contradiction," then, appears to be one that has characterized the bodybuilding subculture for decades. While bodybuilding has been linked with sexual fantasy for more than half a century, it has existed on disparate public and private levels, as Klein has observed. Muscle magazines play a major role in this ongoing disparity. From helping to pioneer gay magazines to offering very conservative advice to young men interested in weightlifting, Joe Weider certainly played a role in helping to uphold, construct and solidify normative and deviant types of sexual behavior. As the information on the following pages demonstrates, Weider ran the gamut as a publisher. Perhaps he knew how to target different audiences. Or, perhaps he knew that, if necessary, the mainstream mail order course could be waved in the face of suspicious postal inspectors and local police officers, who were under pressure from citizens to keep risque materials out of the mailboxes of Middle America (Waugh, 1996; Hooven, 1995). He may have known that the parents of his teenage pupils would have little interest in explaining gay eroticism to their sons. More bluntly, the parents may have revolted against a fitness guru who they believed was targeting their offspring for deviant behavior. As Hooven (1995) pointed out, it took great courage for gay men to purchase magazines such as Physique Pictorial and American Manhood at local newsstands; for such publications to show up at the average American household in the late 1950s may have exceeded the boundaries that mainstream, middle Americans would accept. Weider sought expensive legal advice routinely, and under the alibis "sports," "art," and "nature," he and other producers were able to keep authorities at bay. Waugh (1996) recalled a situation in Canada in which Weider's attorney brought into court an image of Michelangelo, which, as an artistic alibi, cleared Weider photographer Jimmy Caruso of creating unlawful images. "Rather than a legal safeguard," Waugh noted, "it seems likely that the artistic alibi was an unspoken protocol allowing producers, the U.S. Post Office, and local police and dealers to maintain the decorum of the open secret and a functional level of tolerance between periods when the heat was on" (p. 224). Chauncey (1994) provides an excellent discussion of the social atmosphere in the early decades of this century, the point at which Weider arose both as an individual and as a publisher. Chauncey explains: Bernarr Macfadden, advocate of physical culture and publisher of bodybuilding magazines treasured by straight and gay men alike, could barely contain his loathing of the men who sexualized and perverted the male gaze at male bodies. [He insisted] that ther e could be no relationship between the healthy youngster's adoration of a barely clad exemplar of manly muscularity and the depraved sexual desires of a degenerate . . . The overt sexual interest of the fairy in men made the possibility that normal men's admiration of manly bodies might have a sexual component inescapable. It required men whose manliness was already suspect to assert their exclusive sexual interest in women in order to show they were not queer. The insistence on exclusive heterosexuality emerged in part, then, in response to the crisis in middle-class masculinity precipitated by the manly comportment of working-class men and the subversion of manly ideals and sexualization of male social relations by the fairy . . . Middle-class men increasingly conceived of their sexuality-their heterosexuality, or exclusive desire for women-as one of the hallmarks of a real man. It was as if they had decided that no matter how much their gender comportment might be challenged as unmanly, they were normal men because they were heterosexual (pp. 116-117) Clearly, the situation in the early decades of this century was a delicate one, and having come of age during it, Weider understood just how unsettled things were. The booklet addressed below, Sex Education for the Bodybuilder, may have been Weider's strongest representation of cultural conservatism. As its content indicates, social codes and forces were kept in place by a booklet no more risque than a Boy Scout Manual. Sex Education for the Bodybuilder In this publication, Weider (1958) began by discussing the need to maintain a healthy sex life, one "free from frustration and the shackles of prudish convention." He wrote that all too often, boys were raised ignorant of sex and were taught that it was something evil and sinful--not the power responsible for perpetuating the human species. Sex drive, he wrote, provided strength and vigor: "This was discovered centuries ago when male sex glands were injured or removed. Boys whose testicles had been removed developed many feminine characteristics such as high-pitched voices, lack of hair-growth on the face, soft, flabby muscles and other weaknesses" (p. 3). Weider continued with a brief overview of puberty and the changes adolescent males experience during this time. He provided a fundamental review of the male sex organs, and wrote of the need to avoid "the parasitical infestation known as crabs." In addition, Weider wrote, "You must do everything in your power to protect yourself from the insidious ravages of venereal disease" (p. 5). In 1958, the public paid considerable attention to syphilis and gonorrhea, and Weider discussed the two accordingly. He discussed only these ailments, noting that gonorrhea was five times as common as syphilis, the more devastating of the two. While the former could cause sterility, blindness, crippling damage to the joints and heart problems, Weider wrote, the latter could lead to even more severe consequences. "Spirochetes will quietly continue their deadly attacks on the vital tissues of your body . . . Thus, your liver could be diseased, your arteries weakened, your spinal cord partially destroyed, or your brain tissues damaged. You could become deaf, blind, paralyzed or insane. The final effects of syphilis are truly terrible" (p. 7). In Sex Education for the Bodybuilder, discussion of sexually transmitted diseases seems to have been reactionary in nature; that is, Weider discussed, in graphic detail, the importance of protecting against the diseases, but made little mention of exactly how to do so. Perhaps the social climate of the times dictated that he not discuss, say, the use of condoms as protection against both disease and unwanted pregnancy. This was, after all, a relatively conservative period, one in which producers of situational comedies had to decide whether a husband and wife should occupy the same bed. Following his section on sexually transmitted diseases, Weider discussed nocturnal emissions, pointing out that under normal circumstances, an adolescent might experience a "wet dream" once every two weeks. He wrote: If you have a 'wet dream' more frequently than once every ten days you should empty your bladder before going to bed and refrain from drinking liquids for at least an hour before. You should also keep your mind free from sex-stimulating thoughts and avoid reading sex-arousing stories or looking at erotic pictures. More important still, you should indulge in more physical activities and increase the number, or the duration, of your bodybuilding workouts. Your body can use up the accumulated sex secretions for building greater strength and bigger muscles (p.
. Ironically, perhaps, Weider began to advise his pupils to fight the natural urges whose freedom he earlier had espoused. While an individual can certainly use the restroom before going to bed and also refrain from drinking liquids for 60 minutes, can an adolescent male really be expected to keep his mind free from sex-stimulating thoughts? During puberty, sex-stimulating thoughts pretty much sum up the entire process. Again, however, social forces may have dictated the generic content, linking the content with contemporary queer theory. As Klages (1997) noted earlier, "Queer theory insists that all sexual behaviors, all concepts linking sexual behaviors to sexual identities, and all categories of normative and deviant sexualities, are social constructs, sets of signifiers which create certain types of social meaning" (p. 2). One of the last sections in Sex Education for the Bodybuilder--and one that perhaps contains the most interesting content for studying acceptable sexual behavior--is a segment addressing masturbation. In this section, repression becomes dominant, as evidenced by the passages below. The author began with a reasonable discussion of "old-school" thinking, but then offered advice that might seem impractical, if not humorous. He began: Over the years the subject of masturbation has been kicked back and forth like a football. Not so long ago it was considered one of the most frightful evils of youth. We were told that masturbation could wreck your mental and physical health, sap your stre ngth, lead to nervous breakdowns, cause feeble-mindedness and even lead to insanity. Parents, teachers, and even medical men, vied with each other in their efforts to frighten young people out of this habit. Then came a period of reaction, where everything that had been said before was challenged, denied, and scoffed at. The pendulum kept on swinging, and soon nothing could be found wrong with masturbation, and some authorities were even pointing out its benef its (p.
. Having summarized the change in thinking, he then explained the process. What is the real truth about this wide-spread disturbing habit? Masturbation consists of self-stimulation, or the manipulation of one's own sex organs, until an orgasm is reached. This is also called auto-erotism, or self-relief. The average boy starts to experiment with his sex organs around 10 or 11 years of age. He finds the manipulation pleasant and continues it (p.
. In the following passage, normative rulings enter the picture, and masturbation, while understandable, becomes a shameful practice. There is nothing wrong, or bad about the fundamental sex urge. It is a natural hunger, like that which we possess for food or air, or water, and just as important. Normally, nature intended this urge to result in sexual intercourse between a male and a female, for the purpose of perpetuating the species. Masturbation is not part of nature's plan and may therefore be considered abnormal. The fact that the majority of men masturbate at some time or other in their lifetimes does not justify the act, nor does it make it any more normal (p.
. At least two concerns arise from this passage. First, there is no mention of homosexuality with regard to what nature intended. In recent years, there has been furious debate over the cause of homosexuality (for example, Herman, 1997; Pronk, 1993). Some argue that individuals become homosexual through a sociological process, while others contend that homosexuality has its roots in genetics. Either way, and perhaps not surprisingly, it is not recognized as an alternative sexual preference or orientation in Sex Education for the Bodybuilder. Additionally, the author opines that masturbation is not part of nature's plan. Again, many people in contemporary society take masturbation as a given, and so must have Weider when he was publishing magazines that attracted gay men. It should be noted, once more, that much of what Weider wrote may have reflected what middle Americans considered appropriate advice in 1958. Had he condoned masturbation, the parents of his bodybuilding pupils might have considered him some sort of fitness guru with radical ideas about sex. As the following passages indicate, conservative parents did not have to worry, for contrary to his intent of freeing adolescent males "from the shackles of prudish convention," Weider advocated the status quo with respect to masturbation. He wrote: Excessive masturbation can lead to the depletion of nervous energy and physical strength. For the bodybuilder, who wants to build big, powerful, impressive muscles, superb strength, and a magnificent he-man physique, masturbation is definitely out (pp. 8-9). He continued with a discussion of the dangers "masturbators" risked.
