In the previous installment of the James Seely saga, we saw him studiously ignoring John Manning's lustful looks in a dual posing session. This is what happened afterwards, sort of, in the shower. It provides two more examples of Seely's amazingly wide range of facial expressions.
Back in the bad old days, solo shower scenes were a standard part of the physique photo offering. They offered a thrilling glimpse into the private and intimate cleansing rituals of the studio's male pin-ups. Provided they were photographed with discretion, they also allowed publishers to gush about the cleanliness of their models and the healthy nature of sport of body-building which provided muscular models and a sheen of respectability for their subversive skin-pix.
Sportsmen routinely showered together in real life of course (and sometimes workers did too if they had dirty jobs like miners). Nevertheless, squeezing two naked men into a tiny cubicle intended for one was not regarded as at all normal......
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| James Seely and John Manning - Sharing |
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| James Seely and John Manning - Careless Hands |
Seely's plan (whatever it was) has turned into a disaster it seems. (Apart from my frivolous, sex-obsessed inventions, he may have treated Manning as gay man when he isn't or as being receptive when isn't!). . Manning looks both shocked and very fearful. He melodramatically raises a defensive, clenched fist. His fist is about shock, anger and latent aggression, not fetish sex, sorry!
I'm not sure there's an English word for Seely's expression here but it's absolutely priceless. It's the combination of realising he's blundered, profound embarrassment at it and rising panic that he doesn't know how to get out of it. It looks as if he's about to close the shower door so that their mutual embarrassment is no longer on public display, but blockading the two of them inside together doesn't seem like a very good solution in the circumstances (particularly if my interpretation is right!).
In the midst of this furore, both men desperately try to hold their modesty flannels in place*
*The device of models draping a wet flannel over their private parts was intended to make these images decent in the eyes of the authorities. It would be surprising if it worked. because although you can't see any naughty bits (apart from a cunning glimpse of Seely's crotch hair that looks very sexy indeed), the sheer artifice and flimsiness of the arrangement draws attention to the fact that these two men are naked together in this confined space and could drop their guard at any minute and initiate an indecent, homosexual coupling. Indeed they might well have done so and publishing this picture is telling other deviants that they got away with it. Later, Champion Studio, who also used shower scenes, converted the dangling flannel into a posing pouch which was either brilliant satire or a particularly weird example of lateral thinking.
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This No 34 in 'The Look' series at mitchmen blog,
click on the label at the foot of this post to view the others