Originally posted by jonb@May 25 2004, 06:43 PM
In the 80s, it was important to show that not all gay men were AIDS patients, so they brought out a variety of bodybuilders and juvenile-looking men as the "new" gay image.
It always astonishes me what a difference in perceptions a generation can make. I find it fascinating that someone in their 20's can view the 1980's as a time when a youthful gay image was "brought out" as a "new" image. To those of us who were that age in the 1980s, that decade marked quite the opposite, a time when we buried that image! I am also at a loss to explain to people who grew up after the advent of things like protease inhibitors just what AIDS meant in the 1980s, particularly the early part of the decade. At the risk of sounding elitist, or sounding like someones grandfather, no one under about 35 can possibly understand what it was like to be a gay man in those years.
The image of the youthful bodybuilder, or the juvenile man, is not a "new" 1980s vintage image, but has been in gay eroticism since at least the turn of the century, and probably well into classical times as well. (Consider sculpture from the renaissance and classical periods.) In fact, that youthful image was the default image of the gay man, long established. It became more evident in advertising images of models, etc, in the 1980s not because there was a shift in that direction in the gay community. Rather, the 1980s marked a time when more sexuality in mainstream advertising became acceptable. Further, in the 1980s advertisers began to realize that there was a vast market that they were not reaching with traditional ads. In those years, younger consumers, such as high school students, began to be recognized as having serious buying power and disposable income. (Formerly, advertisers had targeted mostly their parents.) As such, advertising tended more toward youth, both male and female, and younger models were seen. Many of those young iconic models from the 1980s did not live very long. As such, they hardly represented an image put forth to dispell notions about how many gay men might have been infected. As those of us in middle age look back on pictures from our youth, we realize how many of them were the unlucky ones.
While the trend toward youth in advertising may have put more images of young gay models in mainstream media, to those of us who were young adult gay men at the time, the decade meant something very different. First, it was about survival. Somehow I passed through unscathed, but friends and even members of my family were not so lucky, and are long dead. It was in this period of time that some gay men began to realize that life was not about youth and beauty, but rather about who would make it to 40, and the great many that would not. Others simply questioned the whole issues of youth, beauty and partying as ideals. Indeed, until the late 80s there was a great deal of denial or misunderstanding about what caused the disease (well fueled by the religious right), and simply being young, attractive, sexual, and a partygoer were often regarded as the root cause. To attempt to convey just how frightening those times were, understand that it is not uncommon to have a middle aged gay man tell you "Of all the guys I hung out with, I'm the only one left." Oh God! To have to say that at 45! You should have to be at least 85 before you are allowed to say that!
Therefore, during the 1980s, the gay community began to develop other standards of what was attractive, not based on the pretty-boy bodybuilder image that had been around forever. In short, some men began to revolt against the long-held buffed pretty boy image. One such schism was the development of the so-called bear movement, in which rugged masculinity, instead of boyish looks, became an ideal of beauty and sexuality. Alas, I hate to bring this up, because in later years the bear culture became an excuse for disgusting, obese, and unkempt men to justify their crude behavior and lack of caloric discipline. Nevertheless, in its original form, the bear movement glorified men who were not the stereotypical young buff pretty boys, but rather men who were fit but perhaps not buff, older but still dignified and sexual, etc.
Other groups of men, differing from the mainstream buff-boy image, began to become visible in the 1980s, too. One might call such groups non-hegemonic, since they bucked the pre-existing dominant images of the gay man as the buff youth. Indeed, some acquaintances of mine have founded the Nashoba Institute, with the mission to study just such non-hegemonic masculine identities. You can see some of their work on their website,
http://www.bearhistory.com.
That particular reference deals heavily with the original form of the bear movement, as it emerged during the 1980s. However, other examples of emerging identities in the 1980s exist. A particularly complex one, which has had an impact resonating far beyond the gay community, is the schism of the leather scene into the old and new guards, which began during this decade. While this topic is far to complex to discuss here, one of its effects was to bring leather sexuality and its values into greater mainstream view. As such, values such as respect of age and experience, and a reduced emphasis on physical good looks, in favor of abilities, became presented to the mainstream. You can learn more about these things by visiting repositories such as the Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago, or the One Institute in LA.
As I said, those of us who came of age in the 1980s in fact saw the youthful image take on less, not more, importance in that decade. However, as time has gone on, we have observed the young body-builder gay male ideal return. This began to show strongly in the mid 1990s, and continues today. You are somewhat correct in connecting this with AIDS, but you got the decade and the operative party wrong. Being HIV positive is very different in its immediate consequences today than it was 20 years ago. As such, young gay men are approaching sex differently than my generation (and perhaps doing so very stupidly). So, once again, the youthful, sexy, indestructible pretty-boy image is surfacing. My generation was afraid of dying; it wasnt about youth, it was about having the privilege to grow old! The kids today arent afraid of dying, so once again youth is celebrated, and we see the return of that image. One of the reasons they are not afraid is because they have not buried their friends (and relatives), and have not felt the pain and the fear it inspires. The other reason in that they believe if they are infected, all they have to do is pop a pill or two every day. Perhaps. But in reality, maybe it only buys you 10, 20 years or so. But, whey youre 18, 10 years is a long time. When youre 43, 20 years is a painfully short time.
And here we see the happy, young, energetic, gym-buffed virile gay man make his return in advertising. This time, although hes still selling Speedos, hes selling meds, too. You mentioned wanting to show that not all gay men are AIDS patients. Today the youthful advertising image is used to show that not all HIV positive people are sickly, as indeed most are not. Unfortunately, there is a bit more to it, and perhaps the image promised too much, and leads people to make poor decisions. There was a recent lawsuit in San Francisco, in which a health watchdog organization sued the public transit system and the company that manages their advertising on the sides of busses and streetcars. The organization claimed that while the ads showed such vibrant images of youthful health, in reality a third of those who took the particular meds would end up in adult diapers, and most of the rest would not have the lifestyle pictured. While being on the meds was a lot better than wasting away and dying, and allowed a more or less normal life, it wasnt what the youthful images promised. As such, they felt that the gay community was being exploited by outsiders using these images.
But some of the stuff that larger women get is all black or all boobs and nothing in between.
