While searching for the pictures I used in the Philosophy Girls post (the previous post), I stumbled on some interesting men's sleaze magazines from the 50s. These weren't high class mags like Playboy and Esquire, these were the raunchy low class ones that dads all over America hid in their sock drawers.
What struck me about these magazines was how expertly they were put together. They usually combined high and low class elements. You'd find genuinely beautiful and insightful photographs side by side with the lowest sleaze. It seems incongruous at first, but when you think about it that's the way real life is...the sublime and the ridiculous served up in equal portions.
How do you like the picture above, shot in glorious, dramatic, philosophical black and white?
The photos were often shot in small apartments with modern, minimalist furniture. I imagine that a lot of readers lived like that, or wanted to. It was really smart of the magazines to avoid classy locations.
A lot of sleaze magazines avoided the porn laws by selling themselves as art reference. Every issue had to feature some models in classical art poses. I love the example above, which is funny and kitschy, but also artistic in its own way. Click to enlarge.
You would think that the sleazies would favor girls who look kind of dumb and slutty (above). After all, in real life girls like that are more likely to be sexually available.Well, these women are represented in these magazines to be sure...
..but the pearls of greatest price (above) were not exactly slutty girls...they were fallen girls...world-weary, downright evil...fallen girls, like the one above.
These women (above) came off as completely dissipated. They'd not only seen the dark side of life, they dwelled there. It was the only side of life they knew, or cared to know.
Editors liked to give these girls "Evil eye" poses.
Were the girls in these pictures really that bad in real life? Who knows? For the sake of magazine sales they certainly had to look like they were. 50s man wanted to feel like he had an adventure when he read magazines like this. He wanted to feel worldly, like he'd come in contact with the seedy underbelly of life and only just barely escaped unscathed. The magazine was selling reader self-image as well as sex.
Interesting, huh?
Wait a minute! Is there room for a Post Script? Auralynn When, who gave me the link for these photos, says diversity is what made the sleazies so interesting. These magazines contained good girls, bad girls, beautiful girls and plain girls. Some were completely confident in the nude, some were embarrassed to be seen only half naked. Auralynn says that's what made these early magazines so vibrant. A good analysis!
16 comments:
I haven't seen a lot of old mens mags but I did download a zip file of one. I had no idea there would be so many articles about poetry and psychology. Would it be fair to say some (not all.) men's magazines catered to a more intellectual or sophisticated audience?
Sex is necessarily a temptation and will always have a base element just like narcotics and other pleasures not inherently evil. I'm reminded of the film "The Notorious Betty Page" based on real life, which depicted the producers of fetish and bondage magazines as caring people just filling a need. The voyeur travels a slippery slope.
The art reference girl looks a lot like the actress in I Married A Monster From Outer Space. Playing a hooker that gets disintegrated.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/blast_of_the_past/5858523582/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Longer limbs maybe
Have you ever seen this web site, it's got lots of great photography, mostly ads from the 50's and 60's. It's in Swedish, but can be veiwed through a translator.
Farbror Sid
I like this Richard Rutledge color picture for a sunglasses ad, from the year 1947! Sunglasses
It's almost like it was OK to read men's magazines back then. They had a touch of class to them. I guess it was so men didn't feel like complete perverts about it. After all a woman's body can certainly be a beautiful work of art.
Amanda: I'm no expert, but the sleaze I've seen generally had an intellectual component in it. Humans are thinking creatures and you always have to appeaal to that side of them.
Joel: I'm not a fan of bondage. My guess is that it doesn't turn on most men. If I'm right, maybe sleaze magazines featured small doses of it anyway, not for the sex, but as a symbol of inhibition.
Mr. Good: Was that a link to a Flickir picture of Natalie Wood? Maybe my link was corrupted.
Don: Haw!
Your comments about the fallen girls and their appeal reminds me of some dialogue from a Quentin Tarantino film I saw. It went something like, "a bruised ego on a fallen angel is always attractive". So I guess Tarantino would back up your claims, Uncle Eddie.
Hey Eddie. Just wanted to say that your blog keeps getting better all the time, and it's been one of the reasons why I've been able to get through another dark point in my life, where I keep blaming myself for all the problems and regretting not doing certain things last year in high school, like doing more clubs, etc, instead of being so arrogant and cocky about drawing and practicing. Also been busy looking for a decent paying job to support my family and found out I could take both the SATs and ACTs for free (had I known this, I would have taken them last year in 2010).
The girl in the first b&w photo is stunning!!
You surely don't see expressions like these in the porn or soft-porn mass media of today. Aside from the dumb/slutty girl, these women have a lot of confidence without being intimidating - even the "fallen" girls are kind of demure in their jadedness. I think modern girls who pose nude have the same problem as modern cartoon characters - 'tude in the place of personality.
Eddie, I say that because from what I've seen of men's magazine's today (Maxim and maybe a bit of GQ), the articles are mostly about sports and video games. Do you think the focus audience has shifted or is it more like they're saying "Well, they're buying the magazine because of the hot girl on the cover, we might as well give them what they want."?
Amanda, Chip: It has shifted, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how.
Roberto: Why not take your two best teachers this year and make a real effort to do good in their classes? Stay ahead of their lessons if you can, do extra reading, never be late with their assignments...in general, show genuine (not fake) enthusiasm for what they're teaching.
If you do that there's a chance that the teachers will put an extra effort into the class, and you'll get more out of it.
Eddie! Thanks for the great posts.
I subscribe to modern day mens magazines as well, and Playboy is very much the same when it comes to article content - they have interviews with people that contribute to society, have art reviews, etc. Don't forget that Playboy hosts an annual Jazz Festival, so they do have some class. As for magazines like GQ, Maxim, and FHM, their content is more catered towards 15-25 year olds.
What all of these magazines have in common (including Playboy) these days is whom they have in their photo shoots. Everything these days is celebrity based, so usually they have an actress or socialite take over the cover and centerfold. I find that these women are usually fairly boring, and have their heads up their arse a little too far. Other girls featured are actually regular girls that aspire to model one day, and see this as an opportunity. Just like old men's magazines. Now, however, all of these girls look the same and have the same body type, are usually shaved everywhere, and are extremely photoshopped. What's appealing about these old magazines are the diversity of women in them, and lack of photo editing.
There are a lot of factors and reasons sleaze is different now than it was fifty years ago, but that's for another day!
-A
Auralynn: Aaaahhh...the diversity! I think you hit on something. The sleazies were about good girls, bad girls, beautiful girls and plain girls. Some looked like natural models, others looked embarrassed to be seen half naked. The diversity made the pictures more interesting to see, even if they were shot on the cheap.
Auralynn: I added your diversity theory to the bottom of the post! Thanks!
Haha! My dad wrote and drew some humor for these magazines in the early sixties, between knocking out stuff for the last days of UPA and TV commercials. The images look like your chicks from the fifties. I guess style didn't change much in the post-nuclear era. The editor was the same guy who edited my dad's comic book work ten years prior, and then moved to editing the comic strip section at the since defunct NY Herald Tribune, where my dad had a several year run while writing and drawing boards for Famous.
You can see my post here: You might have to scroll down about half a page to the heading Comic Books Lead To Pornography.
http://irvspector.blogspot.com/search?q=how+did+he+descend
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