10 Lessons Learned From 60s-Era Gay Skin Mags

From:  OUT

 8. 
THE PLIGHT OF THE 'SINGLE MALE NUDIST:' 
Publications like Mr. Sun, M.A.N., Male Athletic Nudist, and Sun Trek, all mid-late 60s magazines put out by LA-based publisher Wyngate & Bevins, led the "male nudist magazines" in which penises put forth as a symbol of protest over unjust discrimination against single male nudists. They were protesting ostracization from the nudist community, they said:

"One of the more disturbing attitudes that plague the nudist scene is the 'problem' of male singles. For a long time, too long and in some places even now, the male single was about as welcome in a nudist group as a patch of poison ivy. No one ever gave a very clear reason for this prejudice."

 One magazine then went on to debate the pros and cons of creating a men-only nudist camp. The pros won.

These magazines were meant to be read as liberation texts, not gay rags. But like magazines that peddled eroticized images of sailors or bikers, this too was a masquerade. "[It's] a masquerade of non-homoerotic intent: they are steadfastly about nudism and naturalism, and the philosophies and lifestyles that are part of those subcultures," writes Jeremiah Smith at the cultural criticism magazine Reconstruction.

Despite Mr. Sun's protests of heterosexuality, the rambling essays that accompany artsy shots of men in athletic poses are brimming with gay imagery. One essay, called "Nude for Sensory Understanding," proclaimed, "Stepping out of our clothing is more than just getting naked; it can be a new revelation about ourselves." Getting naked with other men unleashes "a new insight into the unused senses."

Of course, even today we can't really show pictures of penises without risking corporate backlash