Finding Out, Ch10: Lesbian Pulp Novels and Gay Physique Pictorials

Both physique pictorials and lesbian pulp novels were intended for heterosexual audiences. They encouraged the heterosexual constructions of work, family, and relationships and condemned homosexuality and deviance from gender norms. Bernarr Macfadden “publicly denounced his gay readers as ‘painted, perfumed, kohl-eyed, lisping, mincing youths’ whom he encouraged other men to ‘beat up’” (Bianco, quoted on 271); Lesbian pulp novels were “frequently homophobic” (274) and “[warned] of the dangers of lesbians and lesbianism” (269). Although lesbian pulp novels were written by and for straight males, actual lesbians found in them places for themselves. They discovered a space in which their desires could thrive, a space that allowed them to insert themselves into the story and live out their fantasies. This is similar to the way that many gay men and lesbians created a space in straight musicals (focused on heterosexual couples) where they could explore desire by imagining themselves and their experiences in heterosexual characters. For example, Stacy Wolf says that gay male scholars “appreciate how musical theater is built around a female star, which, they assert, allows gay male crossidentification” (Wolf 356). Despite the intentions of creators to erase homosexual desire and promote heterosexual ideals, these stories often became spaces in popular culture that gay men could take pleasure in. 1940s and 1950s musicals “enabled richer and more fulfilling fantasies for gay male spectators to read against the grain and to cross-identify with than the pallid representations of actual gays and lesbians in contemporary musical theater” (Wolf 356). The “lesbians of heterosexual male fantasies” (275) in pulp novels were, as Alexander, Gibson, and Meem explain, often used to label female same-sex desire as problematic, undesirable, and dangerous. Nonetheless, these women transformed these novels into lesbian spaces by writing them by and for themselves. Wolf says that Mary Martin did the same by bringing a possible lesbian reading to her acting roles in shows like Peter Pan and The Sound of Music. Gender deviance and intimate female-female moments and duets allowed the audience to read the characters, relationships, and interactions as lesbian.

Wolf, Stacy. “We’ll Always Be Bosom Buddies:” Female Duets and the Queering of Broadway Musical Theater. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. Duke University Press, 2006. 351-376.