Shirtless Sports Fans

I've never been to a sports match except for a couple of baseball games, but I understand that it's customary for fans to take their shirts off and spell out their team with letters on their chests.

Looks like there's more beefcake in the stands than on the field.

They can also spell out the name of their favorite player.

Or miscellaneous sentiments.

It helps to get the letters in the right order.

Two letters on a chest isn't really fair.

More after the break.

Aaron Tobey: The gay boy who wrote the 4th Amendment on his chest

  On December 30, 2011, this became the most famous photo on the internet.  Not only because the guy has an impressive physique, because he wrote the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on his chest.

21-year old architectural student Aaron Tobey was grieving: his grandfather had just died, and he had to fly to Wisconsin for his funeral -- at the busiest time of the year.   He was sick of those invasive scanning machines, so he had a friend write the 4th Amendment on his chest: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated."

When he got to the scanner, he stripped down to his jogging shorts.  The TSA officer immediately called the police, who handcuffed him and dragged him to the airport lockup. After questioning him for an hour, they were satisfied that he wasn't a terrorist (because he knows the Constitution?), and issued him a summons for disorderly conduct.  They also confiscated his luggage.

Left: At the airport.

Aaron put on his clothes, took a later flight (after going through the scanner the ordinary way), went to the funeral, and sued two TSA screeners for violation of his First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment Rights (freedom of speech, freedom to avoid unnecessary searches, and due process in criminal proceedings).  A lower court found in his favor, so the TSA went to appeal.  The Apellate court found that the the screeners did violate the First Amendment in arresting him for a text that was not inflammatory or obscene.  Who cares that he had it written on his chest?

Besides, he was just giving them what they wanted.  Those screeners (since discontinued) showed a lot more of your front and back parts than Aaron was showing.

Unfortunately, that was all of the notoriety (and beefcake) that we got from Aaron.  He completed his M.Arch from the Rhode Island School of Design and Ph.D. in Architectural History from Yale University, and is now an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Wisconson, Milwaukee.  

His research interests include the hsitory of twentieth century architecture, technology, and organizations with a focus on the intersection of histories of computing, management, and postmodernism in a global context.

More shirtless Aaron after the break

80 Years of Archie Beefcake, Part 2: The Comics

Archie Andrews was introduced in Pep Comics 22 (December 1941), and practically invented the image of the American teenager, with countless thousands of comic book stories, plus cartoons, tv series, radio series, movies, and songs.  Preteens look to Archie for a glimpse of their future, and adults, for a nostalgic look at their past.  And gay boys can find in Archie Comics more shirtless and swimsuit-clad hunks than anywhere else on the comic rack.

Archie and his pals change year by year to keep up with contemporaryh fashions, slang, and pop culture, and so has the beefcake.  In swimsuit and locker-room shots, the guys  become more or less buffed, defined, depending on the interest of the comic artist and the changing expectations of masculine beauty.

1948.

Archie is thin, even underdeveloped, with little attention to realism in his arms and shoulders.  In the 1940s, svelte men like Cary Grant were iconic.

1959.

Archie and Jughead appear in the Dan Montana house style, with some indication of pecs and maybe a line down the stomach to indicate abs.

1973.

When I was reading Archie comics as a kid, there was a lot more attention to the detail of pecs, shoulders, and biceps, particularly in the "muscle bound" Big Moose.

1989

The guy's got a chest and well defined abs, in keeping with the muscleman craze defined by Schwarzenneger and Stallone.

More after the break

Tony Dow Beefcake, Part 2: The "Leave it to Beaver" big brother flexes, swims, sculpts, and struts with his boyfriend.

Tony Dow, who played big brother Wally to the Beaver (Jerry Mathers) on the iconic nuclear family sitcom Leave It to Beaver (1957-63),  was one of the few teen idols of the period to regularly be photographed shirtless. 

 He was already an athlete, a Junior Olympics diver, when he was cast, and during the five years of Beaver, he just kept bulking up.  He never appeared shirtless on the show itself, but he gladly obliged the teen magazines.

Afterwards he continued to act and direct, appearing on episodes of Quincy ME, Knight Rider, Love Boat, Charles in Charge, and Diagnosis Murder, but mostly in the various Beaver reboots, rehashes, sequels, and parodies. 

Later in life Tony pursued his passion for art, becoming an accomplished sculptor.  He specializes in both cityscapes and the human form.  Here's The Diver in bronze.

Gay men who saw Beaver during its original run are well past retirement age now, but generation after generation are introduced to the series through constant reruns -- you can watch it today on Roku and Peacock.  And others haven't seen the show, but they enjoy the hunkiness. 

Here Tony is wearing the same swim trunks as in the top photo, but in an exterior by the pool.

More after the break

J. Allen St. John: The Beefcake and Phallic Images of Tarzan

In spite of his aristocratic name, J. Allen St. John was born in Chicago in 1872, when it was still a small town, and lived there throughout his life, except for studying in New York and Paris.


But his imagination went far afield beginning in 1916, when he was offered the cover and interior illustrations for Edgar Rice Burroughs' Beasts of Tarzan

An opportunity to draw muscular, half-naked men?  He had found his dream job!

One that lasted for the next thirty years, through dozens of Tarzan books, plus some of the Venus and Mars series.

St. John's extremely-muscular, mostly-naked men and blatant phallic imagery also enlivened the covers of Weird Tales, The Blue Book, and Amazing Stories.

He influenced a generation of beefcake science fiction and fantasy artists, such as Frank Franzetta.

He only wrote one novel of his own, The Face in the Pool: A Faerie Tale (1905).  It's a standard Medieval "boy meets girl" fantasy: "He came to the tower where the Princess Astrella's golden head at the window served as a gleaming beacon to those who would rescue here."

So her head revolves, or what?

Better stick to illustrations.











St. John always tried to get his male figures as naked as possible, negotiating as many phallic images as possible.  Is this a giant snake or a penis come to life?

More after the break

Why Do Gay Men Like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"?

"Like" is too weak a term.  To gay men of a certain age, it is the movie.  It is more than a movie, it is salvation.

They don't attend the audience-participation midnight showings, with young oddballs throwing toast and rice, yelling nasty, often homophobic lines at the screen, and cheering when the "Frank the Fag" is killed.  They watch at home, alone, a private communion.

 Gay empowerment was not at all what Richard O'Brien intended when he wrote the script of a science fiction-horror musical comedy pastiche.

 If yo're looking for positive LGBT representation, you must overlook or excuse quite a lot:

Frank N Furter is a villain!  He keeps Brad and Janet prisoner, turns them to stone with his Medusa ray, brutally beats his servants, kills Eddie and then serves him to his guests for dinner.  That's not just villainous, it's psycho-killer!

And what do you make of the song "Superhero", which Brad and Janet sing in the wreckage of Frank's lab at the end of the movie:

Superheroes come to feast, to taste the flesh not yet deceased
And all I know, is still the beast is feeding.

Not exactly uplifting, is it?


No one is gay.  The male characters are all bisexual, capable of sexual relations with men and women both, and the female characters are all heterosexual.

The main sexual awakening isn't same-sex, it's Rocky and Janet.

The "don't dream it, be it" scene in the pool isn't gay, it's a pansexual orgy, while Frank is floating on a life preserver from the Titanic.

That pink triangle on Frank's lab coat was not intended to be a gay symbol.  It just happened to be on the coat they bought for a prop.

So how did gay men of a certain age get around all that?

1. They didn't notice Frank's villainy.  All gay and bi men in the mass media of the era were villains, usually psycho killers.  It was business as usual.  You simply didn't notice.

Instead, you noticed the scenes where Frank becomes a sympathetic character, longing for home:

I see blue skies through the tears in my eyes,
When I realize, I'm going home.

Telling about his first drag dreams:

Whatever happened to Fay Wray, that exquisite, satin-draped frame?
As it clung to her thigh, how I started to cry, 'cause I wanted to be dressed just the same.

2. There was same-sex desire!  Even the gay men in the mass media of the era never expressed same-sex desire.  Gay meant feminine and not interested in women, period.  You never saw a gay man with a boyfriend except Jodie in Soap, who was planning a sex change to "become a woman" for him. (They didn't understand trans people, either.)

Then you go to Rocky Horror, and Frank belts out:

A deltoid, and a tricep, a hot groin and a bicep
Makes me shake, makes me want to take Charles Atlas by the....hand.

3. There were bulges!

You rarely saw men shirtless in movies of the 1970s, and costumers tried their best to remove all hints of a bulge.  But Rocky and Brad are both half-naked most of the time, in extremely bulgeworthy outfits.  Male beauty was celebrated, not erased.

4. There was transformation.

I feel released
Bad times deceased
My confidence has increased
Reality is here

After years and decades of being told, over and over, that you, like every man who had ever lived and who ever would live, longed for women and shuned the touch of men, that same-sex desire did not and could not exist, you heard Frank sing:

Don't dream it, be it.  Don't dream it, be it.  Don't dream it, be it.

You left the theater with tears streaming down your face, transformed, literally saved.

I was lost, but now I'm found.  Was blind, but now I see

See also: "A hot groin and a tricep": Nude photos of Peter Hinwood, the original Rocky Horror. With Ian McShane, Morgan Jackson, and Chord Overstreet.

Halloween Tales of Beefcake

Tales of Halloween (2015) is an anthology of 10 Halloween-themed stories.  It made the rounds of film festivals and was released on video-on-demand, and now is streaming on Netflix.

The stories all have different writers and directors, so they vary tremendously in tone, some grotesquely violent, some humorous. And in quality: clever, even intriguing plotlines juxtaposed with boring cliches.

But they have one thing in common: they cast some of the most attractive beefcake stars who ever sat on a casting couch.

1. "Sweet Tooth": A candy-seeking serial killer, with  Austin Falk as Kyle.

2. And Hunter Smit as the Killer.

3. "The Night Billy Raised Hell": a young boy eggs the house of a reclusive man who turns out to be the Devil.  With Adam Pascal as The Dentist.

4. "Ding Dong": A man learns that his wife eats children.  With Marc Senter as Jack.

5. "Trick": Vigilante trick-or-treaters.  With John F. Beach as James.

More after the break.

Beefcake in Acne Commercials. Really.

You could call my high school years "The Clearasil" years.  I carried around a little tube of the sticky white glue-like stuff or the sulfer-smelling brown stuff. One whiff today will bring back a flood of memories.

Also insecurity.

Turns out that acne is practically universal during adolescence, but at the time we thought it was a rare anomaly.  We had no idea that everyone else was secretly carrying around a little tube of Clearasil.

Also guilt.

We all thought you brought the scourge on yourself by not washing your face enough or eating too much junk food.

Nope -- nothing about your eating or washing habits can prevent it.



Media didn't help.  Commercials always yelled that acne made you hideous, thus ruining your social life forever.

Like you'd really give this guy a pass due to his small blemish.

A and B are equally likely to draw teenage attention.  B may look a little better, but only because he's smiling.

"You want to hang out?  Forget it! Those small red marks on your chin are too disgusting!"

More after the break

"Huge in France": Watch It for the Beefcake

Huge in France (2019) stars Gad  (Gad Elmileh, a comedian who actually is huge in France).  He comes to America and is shocked to find that no one recognizes him.  He is constantly walking into a room, announcing "C'est Gad!", and expecting people to fawn over him.

He's come to reunite with his long-estranged son Luke  (Jordan Ver Hoeve), who wants to become a professional model, and...

um, sorry, I lost my train of thought.

Maybe just one more photo, to get me through the rest of the review.

Jordan is from San Diego (I would have guessed Amsterdam).  He's represented by Brand Model and Talent, which offers a large portfolio of his work.  His instagram offers some even more revealing shots.

Ok, this is the last one.

Luke is being managed and trained by his mom's boyfriend, failed actor Jason (Matthew Del Negro).










More after the break

"Tell Me a Story," and be sure to include biceps, butts, bulges, shootings, and sleazoids.

Tell Me a Story (2018-), on CBS and Vudu. "A re-imagining of classic fairy tales."

Well, I've already seen Once Upon a Time, but ok, I'll give it a shot.

Scene 1:  "Three Little Pigs."  Close-up of a bare chest tattooed with the words "Fuck You." belonging to the uber-muscular Pig #1/Eddie (Paul Wesley, left), a low-life drug dealer.  

He is asleep in his underwear in his trailer, showing a nice bulge, when his friend Pig #2/  Mitch (Michael Raymond Jones) drops in. They discuss how much they need money.

Scene 2:  The Pigs' Big Bad Wolf/Jordan (James Wolk), a restauranteur, strips down to take a shower. He's with a girl, but still, bare chest and butt, and I think a bit of his penis. Wow!  They argue over whether to get married or just continue hooking up.

Scene 3: "Hansel and Gretel" Gretel/ Gabe (Davi Santos) and his roommate Billy (Luke Guldan, left), discuss their lives as gay strippers, hustlers, and druggies. Ok, they're promoting the negative stereotype that all gay men are sleazoids, but they are promoting the negative stereotype in their underwear.  Muscular physiques, underwear bulges!  Four in a row!  

I've never seen a tv show display so much male skin and so little female.  Just the way I like it.

Scene 4: "Little Red Riding Hood" High schooler Red/Kayla, mourning her dead mother, is smoking marijuana and acting out, so her Dad moves her to small-town Manhattan to get a fresh start.  

Scene 5:"Hansel and Gretel"  At a mixed gay-straight club, Billy and Gretel/Gabe meet the ultra-rich, cocaine-addled Dan (Paul Rolfes), and go back to his apartment for a three-way.  While Gretel/Gabe is...um...busy, Billy goes into the bedroom and steals from the guy's wallet.   Dan catches on, gets violent, and ends up dead.  Billy runs away, leaving his "friend" Gretel/Gabe alone an apartment with the corpse of a man he didn't even know.  He calls his sister Hansel/Hope for help.

Scene 6: "Red Riding Hood"  Meanwhile, at the same club, Red/Kayla graduates from marijuana to Ecstasy, washed down with vodka, and picks up her Big Bad Wolf/Nick (Billy Magnusson).  After a lot of sex (showing us Big Bad's bare chest and butt, of course), she discovers that he is her new teacher. 

Well, I guess they couldn't help that, except  they continue the relationship.  Teacher-underage student.  Nice. 

Scene 7: "Three Little Pigs"   Pig #1/Eddie and Pig #2/Mitch visit Pig #3/Sam (Dorian Missick), a corrupt cop.  He suggests that they can pay off their massive debts by robbing a jewelry store wearing pig masks. 

Meanwhile, the pigs' Big Bad/Jordan finally talks his girlfriend into getting married, so they go ring shopping at the..um...jewelry store where...um...the three pigs...you know what happens next.  

I need a shower and about six hours of Workaholics.  There's a reason I don't do depressing crime dramas.

Instead of more plot summary, wouldn't you rather see the chest of Dan Amboyer, who plays one of Gretel/Gabe and Billy's go-go-boy coworkers?

Or the bulge of Rarmian Newton, who plays one of Red/Kayla's classmates who gets a crush on her, finds out about her relationship with her teacher, and goes ballistic?

What Has Nolan Gould Been Up To Lately?

I thought that Modern Family would end in 2019, after 10 seasons.  I actually don't know anybody who watched after the first few seasons, after the novelty of seeing a gay couple (albeit highly stereotypic) integrated into the affluent extended family wore off.  The Modern Family was just so affluent, so entitled, so removed from any actual problems of modern society that it transcended escapism, becoming just annoying. 

But it's still getting 4 million viewers in the U.S.  Go figure.

Nolan Gould was the only reason for watching, his hunkiness expanding exponentially as the seasons progressed.  He didn't capitalize on his physique as deliberately and ostentatiously as, say, Alan Kaiser of Mama's Family( even today, while watching old episodes, you are stunned by how blatant his bulge was).   But still, the transformation was startling.

However, Nolan seems to have tapered off.  Either he's not hitting the gym quite as often, or he's more interested in being taken seriously as an actor than in causing teenagers to write his name amid little hearts in their chemistry textbook.  Recent beefcake photos are hard to come by.

Just having your shirt off doesn't make it a beefcake photo.  Looking extremely uncomfortable destroys the hotness.

Flexing in front of the Coliseum in Rome.  You're not thinking "How buffed!"  You're thinking "So he's been to Rome."

Maybe there will be better beefcake in Nolan's upcoming projects.  He has two coming out:

Camp is a web tv series about a Jewish summer camp. There may be hijinks and swimming.

Yes is a drama about a washed-up former child star (Tim Realbuto) who mentors -- and falls in love with -- a 17 year old ingenue (Nolan). At least there are gay characters.

See also: My 10 Favorite Pictures of Nolan Gould

Modern Family Episode 5.13: Phil Dunfy wants Keefe's lips on his mouth.  Who doesn't?

Modern Family Episode 5.17: Gay stereotypes, traditional gender roles, Nolan Gould, and Adam Devine.