LGBTQ+

The ’50s marked the heyday of so-called “physique” or “beefcake” magazines, some of the horniest documents in queer history. Photographers like Bob Mizer, founder of the iconic Physique Pictorial, published thousands of pages of nearly naked male bodies. Flick through the pages and you could expect to see homoerotic poses featuring sailors and cowboys, bulges straining through skimpy briefs and an occasional sprinkling of oiled-up grappling. The beefcake phenomenon wasn’t unique to the U.S. In Montreal, famed photographer Alan B. Stone turned his lens on Canada’s sexiest men, selling his beefcake prints via mail order. His risqué images were advertised in the back pages of publications like Physique Pictorial; naturally, they arrived in discreet packaging. In a world before mainstream videos of hardcore gay porn, these magazines obviously made their way into many a suburban gay spank bank, but they offered more than just eye candy.

Historian David K. Johnson chronicled the impact of this overlooked queer history in his 2019 book Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement. “I had a sense that [physique magazine] readers felt empowered by these magazines because they were mass-produced,” he tells Xtra. “That meant there were thousands of other men out there doing the same thing.” Readers could find one another through letters sections—where they could sometimes find the models too. In Grecian Guild Pictorial, Johnson says, there would be a “Grecian of the Month” pin-up pictured next to his name and street address. “It wasn’t a formal system, but it became clear to me that the biggest commodity they were selling—in addition to the images—was this access to other people. It was basically analogue social media.”