Men’s Magazines of the 1970s: When porno hit the newsstands
The 1960s brought about an age of rapid liberation. Culture, art and society collided to break down taboos that had previously precluded sex from the living room, let alone the newsstand. But as soon as Elvis Presley lit the fuse with his hip-shaking display, suddenly eroticism broke out like the world was a Lynx advert, and the conservative contraband on flesh was a thing of the past.
The decade began with the first tuft of pubic hair sticking out of the newsstands. Penthouse magazine kickstarted a stir that few really wanted to go away. The whole thing went global, and then it became ever harder to quell the revolution of skin. As Dian Hanson’s new Taschen publication, The History of Men’s Magazines, explains: “In Northern Europe censorship laws fell like dominos after Berth Milton confronted Swedish parliament with hardcore photos in 1967.”
Her revolution was very simple and really quite polite, “asking what it would do if he published them in Privatemagazine. The answer was nothing. Denmark followed, producing magazines for France as well. England, always lagging, finally got the knickers off, but kept its censorship laws.” Nobody wanted to be the world’s prudes now. It was unfashionable. In fact, the arts of the age had rendered it boring.
The seeds had been sewn a few decades earlier, and now the teens of that time were in positions of power. By the dawn of the 1960s, just about everything was new, from the Planned Parenthood act of Connecticut in 1965 bringing the pill into people’s lives to Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Suddenly, the stilted lives of the 1950s were shaken up as though humans had invented fire for the second time. You could finish work, rush into town, hear an entirely new genre of music pumping from some new thing called a jukebox, pick up a gal or fella, head home and listen to the brand-new Van Morrison record in crisp hi-fidelity sound, get it on without any fear of parenthood putting a stop to all the fun in the months following and wake up to colour TV news about a President losing half of his brain. This was bound to blow the minds of an entire generation; how could it not?
Nudity on the newsstands was a mere offshoot of this. Everyone joined in with this cottage industry start-up. As Hanson explains: “Behind much of it was politically motivated idealists and oddballs. Peter Wolff and the ‘Love family’ made reader-written magazines, bringing publishing power to the people. Al Goldstein challenged American censorship with Screw, while a Texas ad exec tried to keep tasteless hillbilly humour alive with Sex to Sexty.”
It was all the range. And this latest Taschen publication explores its pictorial rise with over 600 covers and interiors of the finest shots of the day. With images from all over the world, this erotic work captures a revolution that we’re still reeling from today.
You can find out more and grab a copy of your own by clicking here.
