This joyous image by Colt of a leather man joyfully celebrating his sexuality and the freedom to express it marked the high point of 'liberation' around 1980 when anything seemed possible. Men who didn't subscribe to this magazine probably saw the cover advertised. It couldn't have failed to warm the cockles of their heart. Despite the leather referencing, it seems to embrace the whole gay community, what gay men shared rather than what differentiated them. It was an assertion that gay men were masculine, happy and balanced as individuals.
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| Colt - Gene Winchester |
The full image, seen in this slightly different variant, was rather more racy, more assertively gay you might say. Gene Winchester clutching his crotch and failing to hide a generous bush of pubic hair. You might see PlayGuy's 1978 cover adaptation as a cop-out, but it's actually rather effective at implying what you don't see and they did have a full-frontal, centre page spread of this model inside.
This magazine, by aping the title of the famously 'acceptable' heterosexual publication, represented a stab at equalisation, an attempt to secure a permanent place for gay magazines on the 'normal' bookshelves, away from the sleazy top shelf. Consequently the contents rarely lived up to the promise of the cover. It did managed to survive, however, without further compromise until 2009 by which time the boys of Bel Ami had elbowed Colt musclemen out of the way.
I adapted this imagery myself in one of my early pictures - see next post.