Physique Pictorial

Physique Pictorial is an American magazine, one of the leading beefcake magazines of the mid-20th century.[1][2] During its run from 1951 to 1990 as a quarterly publication, it exemplified the use of bodybuilding culture and classical art figure posing, as a cover for homoerotic male images, and to evade charges of obscenity.

Physique Pictorial
Physique Pictorial, volume 5 number 2, Summer 1955
EditorBob Mizer
CategoriesBeefcake, erotica
FrequencyQuarterly
FormatDigest
PublisherAthletic Model Guild
First issue1951
Final issue1990
Based inLos Angeles
LanguageEnglish
OCLC643902464

The pages of Physique Pictorial primarily featured the photography of Bob Mizer, who also served as the magazine’s publisher and editor, consisting of black and white photos of athletic young men, either nude or nearly so.[3] The magazine also served as a venue for homoerotic artists including Touko Laaksonen (as Tom of Finland), George Quaintance, and Dom Orejudos (as "Etienne"),[4][5] and was a predecessor to later overtly homosexual publications.[6][7]

Physique Pictorial was published in Los Angeles by Mizer's Athletic Model Guild, an ersatz modeling agency that provided cover for the publishing of the magazine, and the sale of photographs and film strips through the magazine.[8]

Background

Bob Mizer began his work as a physique photographer in the early 1940s, photographing young men at Muscle Beach. In 1947, he began advertising his photographs in the back pages of the bodybuilding magazine Strength & Health, along with other gay physique photographers of the time.[9] Mizer was prosecuted for distributing obscenity through the mail, and sentenced to a year on a prison farm. Subsequently, the US Post Office pressured Strength & Health to cease running advertisements for physique photographs, threatening to revoke its second-class mailing permit.[10] This led Mizer to the idea of founding his own magazine, devoted to physique photography designed for a gay audience.

History

The first issue of Mizer's magazine was published in May 1951 under the title Physique Photo News.[10] Six months later, the magazine was rebranded Physique Pictorial. Mizer contended that this title was more apt since, in addition to physique photography, the magazine also included artwork by artists such as George Quaintance. While the first issue was a free eight page booklet,[10] subsequent issues increased in size, with additional full-page photographic prints, and in 1952 the price was increased first to fifteen cents, then to twenty-five.[11]

There was a gap in the magazine's run covering most of the year 1968. Author Jeffrey Escoffier speculates that this was because Mizer served time in prison that year on charges of running a prostitution operation.[12]

Physique publications rapidly fell out of popularity in the late 1960s as new legal precedent allowed magazines to print full-frontal nudity. Starting in 1969, Physique Pictorial ceased to operate as a physique magazine, and instead switched to fully nude photographs.[13] Scholar Christopher Nealon described the magazine as having become "more of a catalog for wrestling and bondage videos" by the 1980s.[14]

The magazine finished its original run in 1990. In 2017, it was relaunched by the Bob Mizer Foundation featuring a mix of legacy Mizer photographs and contemporary photographers' work.[15]

Editorial content

Mizer was known to use the editorial section of Physique Pictorial to advocate for political causes. Mizer was especially strident in his opposition to government censorship, and used the magazine to highlight the cases of those who had been convicted of obscenity-related charges. Editorials were also written in support of the American Civil Liberties Union, and in opposition to capital punishment.[16]

Mizer also used photo captions to expound on political topics, sometimes comprising multiple paragraphs.[17]

Issues of Physique Pictorial are shown among other physique magazines as examples of publications intended to entice children into homosexuality, in Perversion for Profit, a 1965 documentary made in opposition to pornography.[18]

The 1998 docudrama film Beefcake tells the story of Bob Mizer, Physique Pictorial, and models featured in the magazine.

Mizer did not include copyright notices in issues published between 1951 and the late 1970s, likely because the contents would have been deemed obscene by the U.S. Copyright Office.[19] Because of this, issues published before 1978 that lacked copyright notices as required by U.S. copyright law at the time, immediately entered the public domain when published.[20]

Notes
  1. "A Look Back at the Glorious Beefcake Magazine That Inspired David Hockney". W Magazine | Women's Fashion & Celebrity News. 13 January 2018. Retrieved 2020-02-18.
  2. "A (Long) History of Physique Magazines". QNotes. 2019-11-01. Retrieved 2020-02-18.
  3. Encyclopedia of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history in America. Stein, Marc. New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons/Thomson/Gale. 2004. pp. 272–273. ISBN 0-684-31261-1. OCLC 52819577.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  4. Leofstreom, Jan (2014-02-04). Scandinavian Homosexualities: Essays on Gay and Lesbian Studies. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-95757-7.
  5. Prono, Luca (2008). Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Popular Culture. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0-313-33599-0.
  6. "Physique mags helped usher in the gay market". The Bay Area Reporter / B.A.R. Inc. Retrieved 2020-02-18.
  7. "How Bob Mizer's 'Physique Pictorial' Pioneered Modern Gay Erotica". www.out.com. 2017-09-26. Retrieved 2020-02-18.
  8. Johnson, David K. (2019). Buying gay : how physique entrepreneurs sparked a movement. New York. ISBN 978-0-231-18910-1. OCLC 1035441993.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  9. Krauss 2015, p. 213.
  10. Krauss 2015, p. 214.
  11. Krauss 2015, p. 216.
  12. Escoffier, Jeffrey (2009). Bigger Than Life: The History of Gay Porn Cinema from Beefcake to Hardcore. Running Press. p. 19. ISBN 978-0786747535.
  13. Krauss 2015, p. 217.
  14. Nealon 2001, p. 136.
  15. "Bob Mizer's Physique Pictorial has returned". Bob Mizer Foundation. 2017-05-12. Archived from the original on 2019-08-08. Retrieved 2020-02-17.
  16. Cooper 2007, p. 102.
  17. Nealon 2001, p. 102.
  18. "Category:Perversion for Profit - Wikimedia Commons". commons.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 2020-02-17.
  19. The complete reprint of Physique pictorial. Taschen. 1997. ISBN 3822881864.
  20. "Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States". Copyright Information Center.

References
  • Cooper, Emmanuel (2007) [1st pub. 1990]. Fully Exposed: The Male Nude in Photography (2nd ed.). Routledge. OCLC 1050065497.
  • Johnson, David K. (2019). Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement (eBook ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-54817-5.
  • Krauss, Kenneth (2015). Male Beauty: Postwar Masculinity in Theater, Film, and Physique magazines. SUNY Press. ISBN 978-1-4384-5000-1. OCLC 906090551.
  • Nealon, Christopher (2001). Foundlings: Lesbian and Gay Historical Emotion before Stonewall. Duke University Press. ISBN 0822380617.
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