Displaying items by tag: homoerotic advertisingCan't Please 'Em All
Joshua Dagon
Flipping through a recent issue of Out Magazine, I happened upon an advertisement for Calvin Klein Jeans. In it, there are four very young models, three of whom are male. Each is wearing nothing but a pair of denim pants, including the single young model that is obviously not-so-male, whose bosoms are strategically obscured.
I am a bit ashamed to admit that, being a gay man and initially responding hormonally, my reaction to the layout was somewhat narrow-minded. Why on God's great earth is there a girl in this photograph? was my brazenly narrow-minded hormonally motivated initial reaction.
For at least twenty-five minutes I attempted to interpret this photographic statement. I doubt I'd have had so much trouble with the impression if the advertisement had appeared in, say, Details or GQ Magazine. But no, this was Out Magazine! I know because I flipped back to the cover several times to make sure I wasn't accidentally reading Esquire or Popular Mechanics or The Journal of Psychiatric Injuries and Abnormalities. No such luck, though. It was undoubtedly Out.
