An often-cited 2007 survey found 42% of all men with eating disorders in the UK were gay despite us making up around 5% of the male population, whereas LGBTQ+ people of all genders were more likely to binge and abuse laxatives – which arguably ties into our increased rates of mental illness. The ‘jock’ isn’t the only archetype of gay male desire but it’s one of very few, and this narrow scope of gay beauty is doing us damage. His aim? To queer the notion that gay men were inherently feminine, something that was – and still is – weaponised against us.įinland’s subversion of hyper-masculinity cemented a radical legacy which lives on today not just in museums and books, but also in gay porn scenes featuring similarly Adonis-like men. Artists like David Hockney preserved the essence of physique culture through homoerotic paintings Tom of Finland ramped up the aesthetic exponentially, creating explicit artwork featuring giant-dicked policemen fucking on the streets. This fixation with physique only grew over time. With no X-rated mags to be found, gay men in search of bare flesh turned to bodybuilding magazines, some of which – most notably Physique Pictorial and Beefcake – became gay media staples in their own right, transforming everyday muscle men into objects of desire.
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Our desire for muscularity can be traced back to the heyday of ‘physique culture’, which blossomed in the 1950s and 1960s when censors cracked down on gay porn.
Ideals may have changed and expanded over the last few decades, but ultimately little has shifted – and research shows that it’s having a real effect on both our mental and our physical health.Ĭrucially, there’s historical context to these standards. The lovers are threatened when an anonymous poison-pen note is sent to one of the heads of the base if they are found out, they will each get five years in prison at hard labor.It only takes a scroll through Grindr to see that a select few body types reign supreme when it comes to gay men: from oiled, glistening torsos to slim, hairless bodies, it seems our definitions of ‘beauty’ are fairly rigid within our so called ‘community’. We are made aware that these characters are living under the most oppressive conditions when Sergey is making a joke about Stalin and is interrupted by a superior who takes note of his behavior. Though set mainly in the 1970s, “Firebird” often feels like it is taking place in the 1940s and ‘50s, but that is likely true to the era and locale being recreated. When the clandestine lovers sneak off to skinny-dip with each other and start to have sex underwater, Rebane quickly cuts to two very phallic jet planes shooting ultra-fast together through the sky. When Sergey and Roman finally kiss, it feels like a collision, like cymbals clashing, but there is a lighthearted quality to the way Rebane portrays their passion that can sometimes feel more than a little silly. Merriam-Webster Targeted Online With Threats of Anti-LGBTQ Violence, U.S. You could follow the first half of “Firebird” even if you didn’t speak English, because all of the meanings are being expressed visually rather than in dialogue.
When Sergey is driving a truck with Roman in the passenger seat, we see trees going by on the windshield but only on Roman’s side of the screen, an expressive visual idea that is all the more effective for not being lingered on. There is a scene in which Sergey and Roman are in a darkroom developing photographs together, where Mäekivi casts an orange glow over their faces broken only by the red of their lips, a very unusual color combination that greatly aids the feeling of a building romantic tension between them. The dominant creative force in this first section of “Firebird” is cinematographer Mait Mäekivi, who gives the blues and reds of the uniforms and the flags on display an early-Technicolor sort of gleam. Rebane keeps things going at a lightly simmering pace as we watch Sergey falling more and more in love with Roman the actors speak English with light Russian accents, but words have very little importance here. Billy Eichner Makes History at CinemaCon With First Look at LGBTQ+ Rom-Com ‘Bros’