Girly Mags vs.

the Censors
The changing standards of sexiness
Jacob Sullum | May 2007

Although they may sound like part of “Bodies…The Exhibition,”

“bifurcated girls” were a popular attraction in American men’s magazines
at the turn of the 20th century. “The Bifurcated Girl Is Coming!”
announced a May 1903 magazine cover. The following month, there it
5 was: an entire 44-page issue featuring “Gay Girls in Trousers” and
“Leading Actresses” in “Men’s Togs.”

Yes, bifurcated girls were girls in pants. As Dian Hanson explains in The
History of Girly Magazines (Taschen), “Women’s legs were objects of
great mystery and by extension desire in the age of floor-sweeping skirts.
10 Even if a man burrowed under the skirts, there were loose leggings from
waist to ankle to conceal the limbs’ contours.The transgression of a
woman who dared to adopt male clothing had as many layers as her
skirts in 1903. First, it suggested she was stepping outside her Heaven-
ordained role as hand-maiden to man; second, it hinted at Sapphic
15 perversion; third, it revealed she had legs, which if followed upward from
the ankle could lead a man straight to Hell.”

Hanson’s heavily illustrated tour of men’s magazines, which covers 1900

to the 1970s and ranges across several countries, offers many such
examples of how taboo shapes desire. Hanson, former editor of the niche Comentario [MSOFFICE1]: “heavily
illustrated tour of men’s magazines” en
20 porn magazines Juggs and Leg Show, celebrates not only the “Hanson’s heavily illustrated tour of
men’s magazines, which covers 1900
entrepreneurs of erotica who got rich by finding creative ways to supply to the 1970s and ranges across several
men with masturbatory material but also the faithful fetishists, such as countries, offers many such examples
of how taboo shapes desire.” Se refiere
Bizarre founder John Willie and Exotique creator Lenny Burtman, who a
pursued their kinky visions with little regard for profit. The pictures
25 Hanson has collected are, by turns, quaint, silly, and weird: men in a
boardinghouse spying on their (fully dressed) floozy neighbors through a
hole in the wall, topless women with Tiki idols, a half-naked mother
wearing black lingerie standing in a playpen holding child-size dolls. (The
book’s most disturbing theme may be beehive hairdos, to which Hanson
30 devotes a chapter.) To contemporary eyes, the pictures are rarely sexy, a
fact that brings home the extent to which fashion and the evolving legal Comentario [MSOFFICE2]: A fact
se refiere a
standards that constrain it affect seemingly instinctive reactions.

Early on, of course, the pictures were not supposed to be sexy. They Comentario [MSOFFICE3]: “Early
on” (línea 34) se refiere a TERCERA
35 were “art nudes” for painters who couldn’t afford models, illustrations of PARTE 2 los inicios de la
aparición de revistas con desnudos
the nudist lifestyle, or inspiring images of health and beauty. For many
 publishers (and presumably most readers), these rationales were merely
a ruse to keep the censors at bay. But as Hanson shows, some people Comentario [MSOFFICE4]: Muchos
editores y probablemente la gran
were quite serious about the ideological implications of nice-looking mayoría de lectores opinan que en sus
40 nudes. In New York during the 1920s, the sinister-sounding Dawn inicios los editores de revistas que
contenían desnudos usaron estrategias
Magazine focused on “eugenics, nudism and figure studies.” Germany para librarse de la censura.
PRIMERA PARTE 2 T
between the world wars saw a plethora of sincerely political nudist
magazines dedicated to Life Reform, socialism, nationalism, and various
other causes. (One had the intriguing title Der Individualist.) After the
45 Nazis took over, the naturist publications were purged of non-Aryan
staffers and content, but some continued to publish into the ’40s,
exemplifying the robust, blond-haired, blue-eyed physical ideal of the
Third Reich. Comentario [MSOFFICE5]: Durante
el dominio nazi las revistas que
contenían desnudos dejaron de ser
Nude photographs were less tolerated in the U.S. during the ’30s, when publicadas totalmente.
PARTE 3 F
PRIMERA

50 explicit pictures were sold under the counter and newsstand magazines
used code words such as snappy and spicy on their covers to advertise
the sexy stories inside. Although the content was similar to “the more
graphic Harlequin Romances” of today, Hanson says, publishers still felt
constrained to hide behind multiple addresses and front names, even
55 while Hollywood-oriented magazines featuring starlets in lingerie
flourished.

American men’s magazines were less risqué in the ’40s, typically

featuring “apple-cheeked good girls in modest swimsuits a boy could be
60 proud to hang over his army cot.” Sometimes the “patriotica” took a kinky
turn, as in a 1942 issue of Burlesk that included “a sequence in which a
gorgeous brunette in a tight uniform toyed with an unconscious blond”—
ostensibly to demonstrate emergency medical techniques. Around the
same time, London Life was running pictures of “bathing-suited beauty
65 queens” accompanied by “amazingly perverse, utterly English reader
letters” dwelling on rubber raincoats, ruffled underwear, corsets, high
heels, and silk stockings. “Actual procreative sex,” Hanson reports, “was
off-limits.”

70 The erotica of other countries was less circumspect. France, the source
of the mail-order smut that so offended bluenose crusader Anthony
Comstock in the late 19th century, was an early pioneer, a fact Hanson
attributes to the country’s “Latin culture,” “long history of sensual and
artistic tolerance,” and post-revolution separation of church and state.
75 Sweden and Denmark became leading porn producers after World War II,
beginning with naturist and art-nude titles and moving on to increasingly
explicit titillation for its own sake, including full frontal nudity and girl-on-
Comentario [MSOFFICE6]: Hanson
girl action by the 1960s. According to Hanson, official censorship in both opina que
countries quickly crumbled in response to pornographers whose financial la __________________________en
Suecia y Dinamarca cayo rápidamente
80 success plainly demonstrated the popularity of their products. en descontrol frente a las acciones de
los editores de materiales
pornográficos. SEGUNDA PARTE
2 censura oficial
 In the U.S., by contrast, the government still tries to draw a line between
mere sexual explicitness, which is protected by the First Amendment, and
obscenity, which is not. Because this distinction is based on “community
85 standards,” which are influenced by what publishers manage to get away
with, the line is constantly moving. By running pictures of topless women
along with serious articles by well-known writers, Hugh Hefner inspired a
horde of imitators (including Duke, a short-lived Playboy for black men
with a button-eyed mannequin instead of a rabbit as a mascot) and
90 helped make sexual content acceptable, if not respectable. By 1970, 17
years after Playboy’s premiere issue featuring a nude but discreetly
posed Marilyn Monroe, community standards were accommodating
enough to allow what Hanson identifies as “the very first pubic hair to
appear on the American newsstand.” It belonged to a snorkeler Comentario [MSOFFICE7]:

95 photographed on a beach for Penthouse, a publication that embodied

Bob Guccione’s vision of a magazine for men who thought Playboy was
too hoity-toity (which makes his title choice a little puzzling)

This is where I begin to understand the fetishists whose publishing

100 exploits Hanson affectionately chronicles, for whom the high-heeled shoe
and the full-length glove became objects of desire by association. The
first time I encountered the word penthouse was in the context of
Guccione’s skin magazine. To this day the word seems erotically
charged, even when I’m punching buttons in an elevator.

105