In June 1957, bodybuilding magazine Strength & Health published a notorious letter —“Let Me Tell You a Fairy Tale”—written by then editor Harry B. Paschall, who decried the “menace of homosexual magazines.”
Paschall’s own magazine didn’t look so different from these “homosexual magazines.” Throughout the 1950s, U.S. newsstands brimmed with images of hulking, oiled-up men posing in tiny pouches, professional muscle bros often clad in little more than a smile. The covers of these, apparently entirely heterosexual, “bodybuilding” magazines attracted the attention of the League of Decency, a Chicago-based Catholic organization whose members campaigned for the magazines to be banned. Strength & Health was amongst the titles removed from shelves, which sent Paschall into his homophobic meltdown. In contrast to his “wholesome” magazine, he argued, “dirty little books”—“physique magazines,” which were aimed squarely at gay audiences—were courting perverts. “These are the people who are killing a clean and wholesome sport,” Paschall huffed, before advocating, unsuccessfully, for the bodybuilders photographed in their “dirty” pages to be barred from competitions…read more.
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