Essence Über Alles

By Dian Hanson. Excerpt from the book 'History of Men's Magazines, Vol. I'

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As the century progressed publishers in England, Sweden, Argentina, Japan, Mexico, Denmark and other nations would join the assault on male essence - and male essence would prove itself equal to it all. In rigorous and often vigorous self-testing men made it clear that no number of sensational love stories or warmly colored pictures could make the male well run dry. This did take many more years than most would imagine; eugenics, the 20th century's answer to Tissot's degeneracy theories, found adherents in many countries and would not fall into disgrace until The Third Reich twisted it to their purposes in the early 1940s. In 1928, Safe Council or Practical Eugenics by Dr. B.G. Jefferis still cautioned:

"Boys are sometimes strongly tempted to buy and to pass around among themselves pictures representing the body without proper clothing or even the relations of sex. You simply cannot afford to let the unclean picture get itself stamped upon your mind. It does not fade away. Long years after you saw it, and probably long after sentences that you have heard on the subject are quite forgotten, you will remember the picture. I have heard men say that they would give any sum of money that they could command if they might wipe off their memory some foul picture that they saw and brooded upon when they were boys." I wasn't there, so I can't argue with the good doctor, but during the more than two years collecting the material for this book I have also spent a few (dozen) days in the Mature Audiences section of the Ebay internet auction site. With the dubious authority that confers, I can attest that many men will give any sum of money they can command to buy that picture they brooded upon as boys.

If you're old enough you may find some of your own cherished memories in these books, but no matter what your age, you'll find things that amuse, amaze, inform, and yes, stir the essence from the early days of men's magazines. In the beginning this was supposed to be a two-book project, starting in 1945 and ending in 1980. As I began prowling used magazine stores, talking to collectors and spending the first of many 12-hour days on Ebay, I saw the start date had to be pushed back. I finally settled on 1900, then came upon the French 'folies' program from the 1880s. The project grew from two to six volumes and still, at this late date, I'm seeing new magazines and hearing new stories I'd like to include almost every day. I've done what I could to get correct information on the magazines and those who made them in the short year I worked on this, but inevitably, given the secrecy with which much of these were produced, some of my facts will prove false; let me apologize up front. No apologies are needed for the magazines. The creativity lavished on these early men's titles puts everything made now to shame. But then I imagine you've already noticed that, as not even Anthony Comstock could have mustered the willpower to read this long-winded introduction before enjoying the photos that follow.

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