Beefcake to “Skatecake”

In this episode of I Can’t Make This Stuff Up, author Tyler Stallings reviews a photography show titled “Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California Photography, 1945-1982;”

Two Los Angeles-based photographers captured the action: the beefcake photography of Bob Mizer and his peers from the 1940s-1960s published in his Physique Pictorial magazine, and Craig Stecyk’s photo documentation of the DogTown Z-Boy skateboard team for SkateBoarder magazine in the 1970s. Each focuses on a redefinition of masculinity in relationship to the swimming pool towards a new vision embracing hedonism. This shift in values associated with the masculine–from a man as hardworking breadwinner for his family to the single, unattached, self-obsessed, and leisure-seeking man–accompanies a cultural shift from the early 1950s to the late 1970s from an economy based on production to one based on consumption.

This article is a year old, and the show is no longer up, but damn, that’s funny.

The notion of a pool as “family site” provides cover for erotic desires that challenge mainstream modes of masculinity and domesticity. Instead of creating images for families who may see their values reflected in magazines such as House Beautiful, or for the “family man,” seeking out heteronormative, erotic images in men’s magazines such as Playboy, both Mizer and Stecyk depict worlds of young men playing, posing, and emphasizing physique and performance. The work of each of these photographers was widely influential since their images were first published in magazines that could be found on most any magazine rack, as opposed to the rarefied setting of the fine art gallery or museum. Pools became art when captured by the photographer’s lens.

Tyler can analyze the hell out of some old pool photos, he’s really making the most out of that art history degree. Comparing the homoerotic physique photos to Dogtown skaters hugging the womb-shaped pools, both symbolizing the desire for “bodies in motion.” Ironically, he chose a photo of Jay Adams to compliment the softcore gay porn. You have to wonder if he was aware of Adam’s gay-bashing assault conviction. Read Beefcake to Skatecake at Kcet.org.

– Thanks to Sandor for the tip.