American Manhood

American Manhood, a relatively short lived men's magazine of the fifties, sported what, by today's standards, seem the most amazingly homoerotic covers.  This one, from February 1953, is a particular favourite, with its bare chested, muscle bound, bazooka-firing GI.  It was actually pretty typical of the magazine, (whose strap line 'The Virile Magazine' just reinforces for contemporary readers the homoeroticism), which variously featured these shirtless muscle men variously firing machine guns, loading artillery pieces and fighting sharks underwater.  But one of the story titles on the cover gives a clue as to the origins of this imagery: 'You Don't Have to be a Skinny Weakling'.  American Manhood was originally title Mr America, a body building magazine which, in August 1952, turned into a men's adventure title.  Despite a new emphasis on fiction, it never quite lost sight of its body building origins, always featuring articles related to men's fitness.

Indeed, 'The Virile Magazine' sub-title was later dropped and replaced by 'Adventure.  Sports. Physical Culture'.  Oddly, at the beginning of 1953, Mr America reappeared as a separate title, running parallel with American Manhood, until the latter ceased publication and the former reverted to being a body building magazine later that year. The new Mr America, in its men's magazine guise, featured somewhat less homoerotic covers - no bared chests or unfeasible musculatures - more typical of contemporary magazines of the genre.  It also sported the sub-title 'For the Man With a Future', until it's last issue in this format, when it changed to 'The Magazine With the Impact of a Hurricane'.  Strangely, bearing in mind Mr America's reversion to body building content, unlike the parallel issues of American Manhood, it didn't feature any body building related content on its cover.  Perhaps they thought those incredible covers on the sister magazine were doing enough to promote the dream of perfectly muscled American manhood...