Cowboy and Indian Toys

When I was a kid in the 1960s, cowboys and Indians were has-beens.  Older kids watched Western tv and remembered six shooters and Davy Crockett hats, but my friends and I played at being spies, Jonny Quest and Hadji, or space explorers.  Still, Indians had a penchant for nudity, like Johnny Crawford and his brother Bobby in Indian Paint (1965), or the god Wisakeha, who Bill and I saw in real life at the Pow Wow in 1969, so when a clueless adult happened to give me a cowboy-and-Indian toy, I made good use of it.

Indian action figures were usually naked except for loincloths, making them the second most reliable source of beefcake in toys (Tarzan was first).

Books about Indians were always good for beefcake photos.

Rock Island was the site of Saukenauk, where Chief Black Hawk ruled over the Sauk and Fox Indians, so his picture was everywhere.  This statue, with a phallic spear extending from his belly,  looked over Chippianoc Cemetery ("City of the Dead" in the Sauk language).  It was lit up with red and blue neon at night.

I got in trouble in school for drawing it in my notebook.  My teacher called it "smut," thinking that the phallic symbol was a real phallus.

I didn't really know who the Lone Ranger and Tonto were, but the idea of cowboy-Indian boyfriends was appealing.  Their arms could be bent, so they could put their arms around each other and kiss.

Waltons: The Gay Connection

It's been off the air for over 30 years, but people still point to The Waltons (1972-81) as emblematic of "good tv" about "family values," by which they mean it had no bad words, parental disrespect, or gay people.  Remember when President Bush told People magazine that we need fewer families like The Simpsons and more like The Waltons?

So we should all live in rural North Carolina during the Depression, have no money but an enormous house and chicken for dinner every night, have enormous numbers of children, and all go to bed at the same time, shouting "Good night" to each other across the darkened rooms?

I hate to be the bearer of "bad news," but even The Waltons had a gay connection.  

1. The central character, aspiring writer John-Boy Walton, was played by Richard Thomas, who starred in Last Summer (1969), about a three-way romance in the gay mecca of Fire Island, and Fifth of July (1982), about a gay paraplegic Vietnam veteran.

2. Will Geer, Grandpa Walton, was gay.  His lover, Harry Hay, founded the Mattachine Society, the first gay rights organization in the U.S., in 1950. 

3. Ralph Waite, John Walton, is heterosexual, but during the 1980s he ran for Congress, primarily due to the incumbent's lack of support for AIDS research and gay issues. 

4. Eric Scott, left (Ben Walton), has starred in two gay-themed movies, Defying Gravity (1997) and Never Again (2001).

5. I've never seen an episode all the way through, but I understand that there was a parade of hunky guys, sometimes shirtless.

6. And frequent buddy-bonding.

7. The John-Boy doll didn't look much like him (it was a blond GI Joe in overalls) but it had a massive chest.

8. John-Boy had an almost total lack of heterosexual interest (before his wedding in a 1995 movie).

See also: My Crush on Richard Thomas

Dreamboat or Dud?: Heterosexism and "Mystery Date"

Mystery Date was a board game introduced by Milton Bradley in 1965.  The object was to assemble the proper cards to create a full girl's outfit for a formal dance, bowling, the beach, or skiing.  Then, if your outfit matched that of the dreamy boy at the door, you got to go on the date.  But you had to be careful of the wild card, a poorly dressed "dud."

The real object, of course, was to get girls used to the idea of being objects of desire, using fashion and accessories to draw the attention of dreamy boys.  The game was for "girls only." 

 I played on occasion, but only when my friend Beth insisted, and even then, I found it annoying to have to pretend to like wearing girls' clothes just to go bowling or to the beach with a cute boy.  Why couldn't boys go on "mystery dates" with boys?

The answer is that no one at Milton Bradley in 1965 ever considered for a moment that any girl  existed who might want to accessorize for girls, or that any boy existed who wanted a dreamy boy at his door.  

But nearly half a century has passed.  Now we have same-sex marriage, gay senators, gay-straight alliances in high schools, a gay teen in Paranorman, and a video of Woody, the cowboy toy from Toy Story, advising gay kids that "It gets better." Surely in new versions of the game, boys can participate, and there might be male or female dreamboats at the  door.

No, not at all.  In 1995 Hasbro released a new version of the game, with a real "mystery" component: you received clues about your date from boys talking to you on the telephone, and had to dress properly for 24 potential dates.  But it was still girls prepping.

Milton Bradley released several versions to tie-in with Disney's successful (and relatively gay-positive) High School Musical  franchise.  I checked the latest, High School Musical 3  Mystery Date (2008).  You have  to prep for a date with one of the four movie hunks, Troy, Ryan, Chad, or Zeke.  But you still have to be a girl.

The Flintstones

During the early 1960s, a lot of cartoons were broadcast during prime time, for audiences of both kids and adults: Yogi Bear, Beany and Cecil, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Top Cat, The Alvin Show.  The Flintstones, which premiered in September 1960 at the rather late hour of 8:30 pm, went even farther, with decidedly "mature" plotlines.

It was a remake of Jackie Gleason's Honeymooners series set in a modernized Stone Age, starring two blue-collar quarry workers, Fred Flintstone  and Barney Rubble, and their wives, Wilma and Betty.  Eventually Fred and Wilma had a daughter, Pebbles, and Barney and Betty adopted Bamm-Bamm, a mysterious foundling child who might be an alien.

There were no supporting characters, only  a few recurring characters.  The camera was focused squarely on the dynamics of the heterosexual nuclear family.

At first, the plots were mostly about misunderstandings, squabbles, and conflict: Fred and Barney want to go bowling instead of going to the opera with their wives; Fred and Barney secretly take dance lessons, but their wives think they are seeing other women.

In later seasons, there weren't many  "husbands and wives can't stand each other" plotlines.  Instead, we saw fantastic adventures, involving spies, gangsters, aliens, and monsters, usually with the focus on Fred and Barney and the wives relegated to short establishing scenes at the start or finish.

The wives became so irrelevant that you could buy toy sets with figures of Fred's car and Dino, his pet dinosaur, but not Wilma and Betty


After the initial series (1960-66), nine more Flintstones series aired, mostly on Saturday mornings.  Some involved Pebbles and Bam-Bam as teenagers, and others involved Fred and Barney by themselves.  Wilma and Betty barely mentioned, or not mentioned at all.  In the juggernaut of advertising tie-ins that continues to this day, we similarly see no Wilma or Betty, just Fred selling Flintstones Vitamins or Barney trying to trick Fred out of his Pebbles Cereal.

Maybe they realized that their primary emotional attachment was with each other, and now they see the ex-wives only when they go to pick up the kids for the weekend.

See also: Yogi Bear and The Three Stooges.

Easy Bake Ovens and Gay Identity

In response to a 13-year old boy's video that went viral, Hasbro has just announced that it will begin selling Easy-Bake Ovens in neutral colors, with ads showing boys as well as girls.  This is a victory against sexism, of course, but it is also a victory against heterosexism.

When I was a kid, boys weren't allowed anywhere near the kitchen (this book was published in 2006).  Girls were carefully instructed in the art of boiling, baking, sauteeing, and simmering, in order to prepare them for their futures as housewives, but boys were expected to have no use for such skills, since they would all have wives to cook for them.

On the tests of adequate masculinity that they kept forcing us to take in school, one of the questions was: "What does fricassee mean?" If a boy knew, he got a visit from the school nurse.

The only boy you ever saw cooking was Jughead in the Archie comics, and he was a "woman hater" (that is, gay).

Thus, any interest in or aptitude for cooking in boys was viewed as a rebellion against our heterosexual destiny: "If you learn to cook, you won't need a wife, so you'll never get married."

Or: "If you enjoy cooking, you must want to become a wife! "

The Easy-Bake oven was the most rebellious of toys you could put on your Christmas list: all pink and pastel, with only girls in the commercials, and the print ads talking about how much "she" will enjoy practicing for her future as someone's wife.

At Christmas 1969, when I was nine years old, I asked for one,  and caused my parents a lot of anxious conversations behind closed doors.  When they emerged, they smiled fearfully like the parents of the demonic kid on The Twilight Zone, and asked "Um...do you think you might like to play pee-wee football next spring?"

Santa brought me a football.

In the fall of 1970, I asked for an Easy-Bake Oven for my birthday.  More anxious conversations, and afterwards my parents signed me up for Judo.

What's Gay about Beany and Cecil?

Beany, a grinning 10-year old boy with blond hair, freckles, and a magic beanie that allowed him to fly, first appeared as a puppet on the local Los Angeles tv series Time for Beany (1949-1954). 

 A 26-episode animated version appeared on prime time (1962-63), and on Saturday mornings (1962-67). There were also books, toys, games, and comics.

This screencapt is from the short-lived 1988 remake, drawn by John Kricfalusi.

The plots involved Beany, his adult companion, "Uncle Captain" Horatio Huffenpuff, the giant green phallic symbol,Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent, and a lot of puns which I didn't understand at the time: Hungry I-Land,  Cyrano de-Bugs-R-Back, "Malice in Wonderland," "Phantom of the Horse Opera."  

Their main antagonist, Dishonest John, a silent movie melodrama villain with a handlebar moustache and a sinister "Nya-ha-ha" catchphrase, often captured and threatened to torture or kill Beany, whereupon Beany would cry "Help, Cecil, help!" and Cecil would rush to the rescue.

When I was a kid, I didn't notice the heterosexism.  It was far more pervasive than in the Hanna Barbera cartoons (Yogi Bear, The Flintstones).  The crew explores No Bikini Atoll, an island that looks like a reclining woman.  The Captain is in love with a husky woman named Ida, Cecil is dating a female sea serpent named Cecilia, and even Beany has a girlfriend, Baby Ruth. 

I just noticed a boy who needed lots of rescues.  Beany and Cecil didn't have a romantic bond.  But the inversion of the standard female damsel-in-distress plotline paved the way for more overt gay partners, boys who faded-out in each other's arms -- Jonny and Hadji, the Hardy Boys, the Adventure Boys in the Green Library.

The first childhood toy that I remember is a huge, cuddly Beany doll wearing a red turtleneck sweater and blue overalls (I didn't check to see if he was intact underneath, like I did a few years later with my G.I. Joe and my sister's Donny Osmond). When you pulled the string in back, he said random things:  "I'm Beany Boy!"; "Let's go explore!"; "Gee, this is fun!"; and "Help, Cecil, help!" 

He got rescued a lot.

Davy Crockett and the Coonskin Cap Craze

During the mid-1950s, there was a craze for "coonskin caps" among the first generation of Baby Boomer boys: a faux-fur cap, round and furry, with a long tail, striped like a raccoon.

The next generation of Boomers found them ridiculous, but remember, this was the era of the crewcut.  With your hair trimmed so tightly that there's not much left, the coonskin cap serves as a nice substitute in cold weather.

And it gives you a nice phallic symbol to play with (imagine putting over your crotch instead of on your head).

Girls had big hair in the 1950s, so crewcuts were a means of gender polarization.  They were so popular that they had their own advertising icons, such as Johnny Crewcut in Boys' Life.   Here he advises kids to "practice undressing fast before bed each night."  The optimal time is under 20 seconds.

I've gotten guys out of their clothes faster than that.









The coonskin cap craze was generated by Davy Crockett, five episodes of the Disneyland  TV series in 1954-55, based on the real Jacksonian-era politician and folk hero, who died at the Alamo in 1835.

Davy was played by 30-year old Fess Parker, who had a master's degree in theater history from USC, but found himself playing coonskin-cap frontiersmen for the rest of his life.  Here's a rare shirtless photo.

I've never seen the miniseries, but they give Davy a sidekick, played by Buddy Ebsen (later Jed Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies), so there may have been some buddy-bonding gay subtexts.

He also hung out with such folk heroes as Jim Bowie (Kenneth Tobey) and Mike Fink (Jeff York), so there may have been some beefcake,

Davy Crockett has appeared in over 50 other movies and tv series, played by a surprising number of recognizable stars: Fred Gwynne, John Wayne, Johnny Cash, Billy Bob Thornton, Brian Keith, and John Goodman (on Saturday Night Live).

Jake Wynne (seen here at the New Orleans Shakespeare Festival) played Crockett in A Man of Reputation (2012), swapping tall tales with Mike Fink in a bar.

But none of them have ever come near the fame of Fess Parker, his coonskin cap, and "The Ballad of Davy Crockett"

Born on a mountain top in Tennessee, 
Greatest state in the Land of the Free. 
Raised in the woods so he knew every tree, 
Killed him a b'ar when he was only three.

Looking for a Hula Girl: Erasing Gay People from Ebay

If you want to see just how thoroughly gay people are erased from the world, do some online shopping:

Allposters.com suggests that "men" will like posters of female breasts (labeled “Goals”), and women lowering their panties and asking us to “Lend a hand.”

A total of 25% of the 274 posters for men and 36% of the 131 posters for women assert that only heterosexuals exist.

Calendars.com offers The Boyfriend of the Month, featuring “that perfect guy that anyone would consider a great catch!"  So far so good.

But there's also a a Chippendales Calendar, “a must have for every female!”
The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Calendar is “a favorite with men around the world!”

At Gifts.com, the category For Him offered lots of gifts for straight weddings and anniversaries, personalized His N Her Pillow Cases, a “Weekend of Love Kit” with an image of a man and woman from the Kama Sutra, and “Life Lesson Figurines,” about men getting into humorous scrapes that assume hetero-coupling: “Just because you like it, doesn’t mean she will”; “When she asks for a backrub, sometimes she just means a backrub.”

 Amazon.com, the mega book and everything else site, wins the award for the most egregious insistence that gay people do not exist.

The introduction to the Boyfriends/Husbands Gift category amply references the “white knight” who has “swept her off her feet.”
The introduction to the Girlfriends/Wives category rhapsodizes about the “woman in his life,” with never a same-sex partner acknowledged or implied.

Ebay, the online auction giant, displays the least erasure of any of the websites I observed, perhaps because the item descriptions are not written by homophobic advertising agencies.

Orlando Bloom, star of The Lord of the Rings and The Pirates of the Caribbean series (left), appears on 728 items up for auction, but less than 10 asserted that no gay men exist: a photo “for the ladies”; a Pirates of the Caribbean t-shirt that is “perfect for guys -- no picture of Orlando Bloom on the front!”; a poster of a shirt-less Bloom reclining on a large white pillow (“Great poster, ladies!).

192 auctions offer items emblazoned with the likeness of Zac Efron, the star of Hairspray and the popular High School Musical franchise (top photo). There are posters, photos, articles of clothing, school supplies, pillowcases, and even light switch covers. But only four of item descriptions specify that all potential bidders, and all potential recipients, must be girls. The others exclaimed: “Everybody’s favorite teen hunk!”, or “A great addition to any fan’s collection!"

Still, it wasn’t hard to find erasure:
A dart board emblazoned with a picture of a male model, advertised as “Ladies, here is your dart board!"
A mug showing ladies in a state of undress “for the men!”
Euphoria Cologne, to “attract the opposite sex!”
A photo of Taylor Lautner  “for the ladies.”

A T-shirt emblazoned with “Got boys?” in a parody of the popular “Got milk?” ads, “tailored for the ladies!”
A fishing lure in the form of a mermaid, “Guaranteed to catch all fishermen!”
A Hawaiian hula boy bobbler for a car’s dashboard, “looking for a hula girl.”
A "dainty" pink tool set, "for women only"

And my favorite: a selection of action-adventure DVDs for men to watch "while your wife is out shopping."  You could also get a chick-flick set for women to watch "while your husband is out hunting."

Me kill saber-toothed tiger, you cook!

Slim Goodbody

When I was a kid, I had a toy called "The Visible Man."  It was a model of a man with no skin.  You had to assemble the skeleton and put all of the organs in place (sadly, no penis), I guess to teach you anatomy.















During the 1970s, actor John Burstein got the idea of becoming a human "Visible Man."  He painted muscles and organs onto a leotard, and as Slim Goodbody, set out to teach kids about anatomy.

As you can see, the effect was rather disgusting, and the guy had no physique.  But at least he sported a rather noticeable bulge.















There are actually several different suits, with different organs and muscles on display.

Slim Goodbody struck a nerve with parents looking for educational programming, and soon he was appearing on the morning kidvid Captain Kangaroo twice a week.

He branched out from anatomy to nutrition, exercise, and personal hygiene, and eventually to such hot topics as bullying and environmentalism.

 In 1980 he got his own PBS series, Inside Story.  Plus he appeared in a series of books and educational films.




Slim became so busy that, for seven years, there were two of him.  While John Burstein concentrated on the tv series, actor and mime Bill Bowers played Slim Goodbody at schools, hospitals, and public events.

Burstein still performs as Slim Goodbody all over the United States and Canada.

Though outrageously fey in his Slim persona, Burstein is straight.  Bowers is gay.

I Love Lucy

When I moved to West Hollywood in 1985, I found I Love Lucy a gay favorite. Though it had been off the air for nearly 30 years, drag queens recreated Lucy routines.  You could buy Lucy gifts at Dorothy's Surrender in West Hollywood, like Lucy and Ricky dolls, or a photo of Desi Arnaz in the pool.  Ricky's Cuban-accented "Lucy, I'm home" was a common catchphrase.

What was the gay connection?

The premise of the venerable sitcom (1951-57) was aggressively heterosexist, with no hint of satire or critique.  Nightclub performer Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz, left) and his wife Lucy (Lucille Ball) were lovebirds, neighbors Fred and Ethel (William Frawley, Vivian Vance) grumpy but affectionate.

No beefcake.  Granted, Desi Arnaz was handsome, and occasionally a cute friend showed up, but they were always fully clothed, usually in one of those 1950s business suits that hid everything.  Even the Ricky doll was somewhat lacking in musculature.

No gay characters, not even by implication.

No gay connections in the actors' other roles, though Desi Arnaz was bisexual, and his son Desi Arnaz Jr. starred in some gay-subtext movies.

And no hint of homoromance.  Though Lucy and Ethel were buddies, they displayed no passion, hanging out mostly to complain about their husbands and scheme to get more power in the relationship.

Maybe that was the gay connection.  As a 1950s housewife, Lucy was powerless, treated as a child (she got an allowance, and Ricky threatened to spank her if she misbehaved).  Her domain was the home, serving coffee to Ricky as he read his morning newspaper.   To get what she wanted, she had to resort to subterfuge.

The wild schemes that we enjoy watching all resulted from "Ricky won't let me do X" or "Ricky won't let me have X."  Groups with no power, like gay people and 1950s housewives, always have to work behind the scenes, appropriate what is meant for someone else.  And, in spite of her mishaps, Lucy was often triumphant.

See Cesar Hooks up with the Entire Male Cast of "I Love Lucy"

General Whitman and his Cold War Boyfriend

When I was a kid in the 1960s, my parents hated books.  Comic books were suspect enough -- but full-sized books would brainwash me into believing atheism and evil-lution, keep me away from healthy masculine activities like sports, and "strain my brain"!  Maybe they were worried that reading would make me want to escape the future of factory job, house, wife, and kids they had mapped out for me.

So I could only get away with reading only if I could convince them that it was required for school.  That made General Whitman's Adventures ideal.

They were brief, 15-page storybooks, accompanied by "adventure maps,"  written by George S. Elrick (who also wrote tie-in books for tv series like Flipper, Batman, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.).  They were published by comic book company Whitman (talk about product placement!).

General Whitman's Adventures in Intriguing Europe

General Whtiman's Adventures in Exotic Asia
General Whitman's Adventures in Exciting Africa

After that they ran out of adjectives, and just had him traveling to Australia, North America, South America, the United States, and Around the World.

General Whitman,  a "global troubleshooter for the armed forces," was a thin, middle aged white guy carrying a globe.

In each story, he traveled across the designated continent with his assistant, Lieutenant Scott, on on a top secret assignment.  In South America, for instance, he was assigned to inspect rivers that might provide "juice for mission control centers, "and to select likely sites for camouflaged missile silos."

This was during the Cold War, after all.

Meanwhile he pontificated about the continent's history and geography -- with what today seems a very paternistic, Orientalist superiority complex:  "Before this continent was discovered, the poor savages were uncivilized."

And Lieutenant Scott expressed constant disgust or amazement over local customs. In Tibet, he exclaimed: "That lady's making a sandwich out of her face!"

"Butter is often used as a beauty aid here," the General explains.  "The Tibetans are too primitive to have our modern scientific cosmetics."

Still, it beat National Geographic, with its boring "This country is a study in contrasts, embracing its rich traditions and looking toward the future."

And I could claim "research for my geography class."

And neither General Whitman nor Lieutenant Scott mentioned wives or girlfriends back home.  I was pretty sure that they were best men (my childhood term for gay partners).

He'll Eat Most Anything: Gay Symbolism in Hot Dog Ads of the 1960s

When I was a kid in the 1960s, we couldn't ignore the resemblance between the hot dog and the penis.  We used the word "wiener" for both. Consumption of the hot dog became a metaphor for sex, with the implication that whoever liked eating hot dogs also liked sex with men.

At summer camp the boys all made fun of anyone foolish enough to sing:

I love the Wiener Man, he owns the Wiener Stand
He'll eat most everything from hot dogs on down
Someday I'll join his life, I'll be his wiener wife.
Hot Dog! I love the Wiener Man!

Especially boys who aspired to become a "wiener wife."

A series of 1960s commercials involved hot-dog fans bullying a holdout into singing this song, providing us with more hilarity:

Oh, I'd love to be an Oscar Mayer Wiener, that is what I truly want to be
Cause if i were an Oscar Mayer Wiener, everyone would be in love with me.

Bragging that the hot dogs were "all beef" helped clarify what was meant.

The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, a 27-foot long car shaped like a hot dog, was especially phallic.  A fleet of them toured the country.  One appeared in Rock Island at the Pow Wow every year (where I saw the Naked Indian God), sometimes at the Celtic Festival, and once at Denkmann Elementary School.

The driver, Little Oscar, distributed hot dogs, hot dog-shaped whistles, or toy wienermobiles.

I liked the toy wienermobile the best.  Even more phallic, if that's possible. Imagine that the base is an unzipped pair of brown pants.

There are currently 8 Wienermobiles on tour.  The 12 drivers (8 women, 4 men) are selected from college students for year-long gigs.

They all have whimsical names, but I'd like to know more about Sizzlin' Steve (aka Mike Tierney) of the University of Missouri, a journalism major, and Stevie Bunder (aka Steve Johnson, left) of St. John's University in Minnesota, where he majored in environmental science and was on the lacrosse team.

See also Gay Symbolism in Hamburger Ads; and "Have You Had a Squirt Today?"