Fireman calendars are a type of decorative calendar that feature images of shirtless or scantily-dressed muscular men depicted as firemen. They are typically marketed towards heterosexual women, and are often created by fire departments to raise money for charity.
The precursor to fireman calendars were physique magazines, also known as beefcake magazines, which rose to popularity in the 1940s. These magazines depicted muscular men in minimal or no clothing performing poses. Physique magazines represented a shift in magazine culture from celebrity models to blue-collar models, such as firemen, which would influence later decorative calendars. [1]
When pornography grew in popularity in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly after Manual Enterprises, Inc. v. Day made images of male full-frontal nudity legal, straight women began to be targeted as consumers of male-focused smut, which gave way to female-targeted calendars. [1]
Decorative calendars featuring muscular men began to rise in popularity in the 1980s, and calendars depicting firemen became ubiquitous. While some are created purely for profit, most use proceeds to raise money for charity. [1] [2]
In the 21st century, firemen calendars have become popular in Asia, particularly Taiwan. In 2018, the Taiwanese government invited two models from the Australian Fireman Calendar to visit a travel expo, and gave out over 10,000 calendars. The Australian models are considered celebrities in Taiwan, and their visits attract considerable media attention. [3]
Calendars that feature muscular men regardless of profession are collectively called "beefcake calendars". Other types of beefcake calendars include those featuring college students, police officers, and Latino models. [1]
Beefcake is a performance or a form of glamour photography depicting a large and muscular male body. Beefcake is also a publication genre. A role a person plays in a performance may be called beefcake. The term was believed to be first used by Hollywood columnist Sidney Skolsky.
Touko Valio Laaksonen, known by the pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist who made stylized highly masculinized homoerotic art, and influenced late 20th-century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3,500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with exaggerated primary and secondary sex traits, wearing tight or partially removed clothing.
The Athletic Model Guild, or AMG, was a physique photography studio founded by Bob Mizer in December 1945. During those post-war years, United States censorship laws allowed women, but not men, to appear in various states of undress in what were referred to as "art photographs". Mizer began his business by taking pictures of men that he knew. His subjects would often pose for pictures which illustrated fitness tips and the like, but were also viewed as homoerotic material.
Erotic photography is a style of art photography of an erotic, sexually suggestive or sexually provocative nature.
A calendar is used to display dates and related information, usually in a table format. Calendars are used to plan future events and keep track of appointments, and so a typical calendar will include days of the week, week numbering, months, public holidays and clock changes. Printed calendars also often contain additional information relevant for specific groups – for instance, a Christian liturgical calendar will show holy days and liturgical colours, while a calendar for amateur astronomers will highlight phases of the moon, conjunctions and eclipses. Alongside their practical uses, calendars have taken on a decorative purpose, offering an easy way to introduce regularly changing artwork to a space, and have even influenced art and sexuality by popularizing the pin-up style.
Depictions of nudity include all of the representations or portrayals of the unclothed human body in visual media. In a picture-making civilization, pictorial conventions continually reaffirm what is natural in human appearance, which is part of socialization. In Western societies, the contexts for depictions of nudity include information, art and pornography. Information includes both science and education. Any ambiguous image not easily fitting into one of these categories may be misinterpreted, leading to disputes. The most contentious disputes are between fine art and erotic images, which define the legal distinction of which images are permitted or prohibited.
Physique magazines or beefcake magazines were magazines devoted to physique photography — that is, photographs of muscular "beefcake" men – typically young and attractive – in athletic poses, usually in revealing, minimal clothing. During their heyday in North America in the 1950s to 1960s, they were presented as magazines dedicated to fitness, health, and bodybuilding, with the models often shown demonstrating exercises or the results of their regimens, or as artistic reference material. However, their unstated primary purpose was erotic imagery, primarily created by and for gay men at a time when homosexuality was the subject of cultural taboos and government censorship.
Beefcake (1999) is a docudrama homage to the muscle magazines of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s—in particular, Physique Pictorial magazine, published quarterly by Bob Mizer of the Athletic Model Guild. It was inspired by a picture book by F. Valentine Hooven III and was directed by Thom Fitzgerald.
Beefcake is a body shape depicting a large and muscular male body.
John Joseph Quinlan nickname Stoneface, is an American actor. He is a former bodybuilder, professional wrestler, fitness model, fashion model, art model and romance cover model. In 2012 he was an official image model and brand ambassador for the supplement company Nutrabolics. In December 2015, Quinlan was signed on as the lead male actor for the 2019 film, A Sense of Purpose: Fighting For Our Lives by producer Jillian Bullock. In February 2020, Quinlan was selected to play the villain role of Marvel Rhino for the TV/Web Series: Spider-Man And The Monsters of Manhattan set to be released in 2024.
Nude calendars are a type of wall calendar that feature nude models in a variety of scenes and locations. Predominantly in the United Kingdom, nude calendars are produced to raise money for charity.
Glamour photography is a genre of photography in which the subjects are portrayed in erotic poses ranging from fully clothed to nude. The term may be a euphemism for erotic photography. For glamour models, body shape and size are directly related to success. This type of photography is also known as "cheesecake" or "pin-up" for women and "beefcake" for men.
The effects of advertising on body image have been studied by researchers, ranging from psychologists to marketing professionals. "These days we know that the media and body image are closely related. Particularly, the body image advertising portrays affects our body image. Of course, many other things influence our body image: parenting, education, intimate relationships, and so on. The popular media does have a big impact, though" This is because thousands of advertisements contain messages about physical attractiveness and beauty, examples of which include commercials for clothes, cosmetics, weight reduction, and physical fitness. Researchers have conducted studies in an attempt to see if such advertisements have effects on teenage body image, and what those effects might be.
Gender in advertising refers to the images and concepts in advertising that depict and reinforce stereotypical gender roles. Advertisements containing subliminal or direct messages about physical attractiveness and beauty have been of particular interest regarding their impact on men, women, and youth. Gendered advertisements have and continue to shape what is expected of a distinct gender, regarding physique and attitude. Not only are these types of stereotypes present in various forms of media, but they also hold significant weight in everyday life.
Robert Henry Mizer was an American photographer and filmmaker, known for pushing boundaries of depicting male homoerotic content with his work in the mid 20th century.
Harry Bush (1925–1994) was an American artist known for his homoerotic illustrations. Bush's highly detailed boy next door-style depictions of men made him one of the most notable artists of the era of beefcake magazines.
Physique Pictorial is an American magazine, one of the leading beefcake magazines of the mid-20th century. During its run from 1951 to 1990 as a quarterly publication, it exemplified the use of bodybuilding culture and classical art figure posing, as a cover for homoerotic male images, and to evade charges of obscenity.
Grecian Guild Pictorial was an American physique magazine published from 1955 until 1968. While ostensibly dedicated to art, health, and exercise, like other physique magazines of the time, it was understood that, in practice, its homoerotic photography and illustrations were almost exclusively created by and for gay men. It differed from other physique magazines in its focus on themes and imagery from Ancient Greece, which was seen by many as a coded reference to homosexuality. It has been described as one of the "gayer" of the physique magazines.
Physique photography is a tradition of photography of nude or semi-nude men which was largely popular between the early 20th century and the 1960s. Physique photography originated with the physical culture and bodybuilding movements of the early 20th century, but was gradually co-opted by homosexual producers and consumers, who favoured increasingly homoerotic content. The practiced reached its height in the 1950s and early 1960s with the inception of physique magazines, which existed largely to showcase physique photographs and were widely consumed by a mostly-gay audience.
The masculine beauty ideal is a set of cultural beauty standards for men which change based on the historical era and the geographic region. These standards are ingrained in men from a young age to increase their perceived physical attractiveness.