Physical Culture, Part One

Bernarr Macfadden founded Physical Culture in March of 1899.

It was the forerunner of health/muscle/fitness magazines, many of which since the 1950s eventually morphed into today's gay pornographic magazines. Macfadden's ideas about health, nutrition, and even sexuality, though themselves not that revolutionary because they were rooted in the New Thought and naturalistic/Darwinian movements of the late nineteenth century, were expressed in a way that many readers considered obscene, especially the photos of both men and women (including Macfadden himself) wearing minimal or even no clothing. 
 

The first issues of the magazine focused on bodybuilding, but he soon added articles about nutrition and natural foods and homeopathic methods of medical treatment. The magazine became a bestseller, unlike the fourteen books he had written on health before. He also published a magazine for women called Beauty and Health. 
 

In 1904, Macfadden began to organize and promote bodybuilding competitions in which men and women competed.

 

In 1905, Anthony Comstock, the self-appointed smut exterminator and originator of the later to be controversial Comstock Laws against obscenity in the media, brought legal action against Macfadden to have him arrested and a second exhibition scheduled in Madison Square Garden cancelled on the grounds that it was lewd and obscene.

 

Macfadden was given only a suspended sentence, and because of the publicity, the crowds filled the arena and people had to be turned away. People (men, presumably) who came to the show hoping to see a display of female flesh were disappointed. 

All the female participants were modestly attired in union suits. But I wonder about those male participants and the mostly male audience that paid their good money to also admire the men. Apparently overt female sexuality wasn't the only show on the menu.

What about the unspeakable taboo of homosexuality? It must have been an obscene sight for Mr. Morality himself, Comstock, to behold all those male hunks parading their masculinity before the lust-filled raw of the crowd.