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  • Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement by David K. Johnson
  • Cora Butcher-Spellman
Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement. By David K. Johnson. New York City: Columbia University Press, 2019; pp. vii + 308, $32.00 cloth, $31.99 ebook.

This is historian David K. Johnson's second book. His first, The Lavender Scare (2004), is well- cited and was made into an award- winning documentary in 2019. This book narrativizes what Johnson calls the physique era from 1951 to 1967 which is marked by the rise and fall of physique photography, magazines, and other related businesses. Johnson argues other scholars have wrongly interpreted physique culture as apolitical due to its focuses on sex and profit. Instead, Johnson explains profit- focused work helped build imagined and actual community as a cite of resistance and a group identity formed in opposition to censorship.

The first three chapters examine the rise of physique era commerce. The introduction explains physique magazines as many gay men's first recognition of gay culture and as a result made them feel less isolated. Johnson explains the low number of women in physique culture stems from the later development of the lesbian market due to lesbians' lower spending power, which resulted in the "relative dominance of gay male consumer culture" (20). Johnson notes the oversaturation of whiteness in physique culture and commerce but, rather than blame producers, Johnson calls white consumers the "real culprits" responsible for physique magazines' failure to feature people of other races (16). The book does not discuss race in relation to the body and instead discusses race only in terms of unsellable portrayals of gay masculinity. Chapter 1, "Emerging from the Muscle Magazines: Bob Mizer's Athletic Model Guild," tells the story of Bob Mizer's photography business and magazine through which he became the hub of the network of early, underground physique entrepreneurs. Johnson argues Mizer's experience with postal inspections, arrest, trial, and other "forces of censorship" sharpened his outrage and politicized him and his work (32). Chapter 2, "Selling Gay Books: Donald Webster Cory's 'Business with a Conscience,'" begins with an explanation of Greenberg Publishers' vice president Brandt Aymar's idea to create the "H" list of customers interested in books on homosexuality. Greenberg [End Page 223] used this and other tactics to market books such as Donald Webster Cory's The Homosexual in America (1951), which was the first nonfiction account of gay life and earned Cory the title of father of the homophile movement. Following this success, Aymar and Cory started a successful mail- order book club that became an influential model for gay businesses.

The next two chapters detail how various businesses attempted to meet growing consumer demand for community and connections. Chapter 3, "The Grecian Guild: Imagining a Gay Past, and Future," examines the lure and prevalence of Grecian references and aesthetic as means to articulate a respectable shared gay past. Johnson argues these references were more of a tactic of gay signaling than evidence of closeted- ness. At this point in the era, Johnson argues all gay physique magazines rejected "gender deviation and effeminacy" (95). This chapter also discusses attempts to blend Christian and Grecian values. Early community- building efforts included largely unsuccessful conferences and listing one reader's address per issue of The Grecian Guild. Chapter 4, "'I Want a Pen Pal!': Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield and the Adonis Male Club," tells of the development of pen- pal services and the associated risks of organizing and participating in these clubs during Arthur Summerfield's anti- smut campaign. Johnson argues participation in pen- pal clubs functioned as a "grassroots revolt," provided an alternative to bar culture, and enabled rural gay men to get connected (125). Consequences included harassment, "intimidation, arrest, prosecution, and job loss" (150). Although Summerfield successfully shut down the Adonis Male Club, personal advertisements and address exchanges became central features of gay publications in the 1960s.

The final three chapters explain how legal successes brought the peak and decline of physique commerce. Chapter 5, "Defending a Naked Boy: Lynn Womack and the Supreme Court," details how Lynn Womack's successful US Supreme Court obscenity case revolutionized the...

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