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 Article - An insight into early nudist magazines
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Admin
Forum Admin


Posted - 10/31/2007 :  8:07:23 PM  Show Profile  Visit Admin's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Jaybird was a "nudist" magazine that was around during the time that porn mags didn't have the protections that nudist magazines enjoyed. As a result this "nudist" magazine printed some very questionable photos during its later years of publication.

Warning for those sensitive to adult references: This article from Salon.com shares some insights into the confusion between nudism and sex, and how the adult magazine industry benefited from this in the 1960's. It includes some adult references that some individuals may find offensive. Due to its historic insight and direct relation to early nudist magazines and the nudism movement excerpts are reprinted here where the article relates to nudism.


From Salon.com - Apr 11, 2003

When nudists swung

Reliving the glory days of Jaybird, the mid-'60s magazine for randy nature lovers.
By David Bowman

Jaybird was a hippie nudist magazine that published in the 1960s, back when the bunnies in Playboy couldn't show their pubic hair, let alone their vulvas. But the law allowed so-called "nudist" magazines to show a chick's whole enchilada.

So Jaybird claimed it was a hippie nudist magazine. And it was, since in a Republican nudist magazine, you'd probably see photos of naked men and women playing volleyball or digging up crabgrass. In Jaybird, a hippie dude would blow his girl's p**** like a kazoo while another flower child flashed her pudendum -- and anus too -- giggling madly below a poster of John Wayne.

Taschen has just reprinted the best of Jaybird in one trilingual edition (English/German/French), compiled by the legendary dirty magazine editor -- of Outlaw Biker, Juggs and Leg Show -- Dian Hanson. Salon spoke with her by phone.

How did you get involved with this project?

I work for Taschen now. I'm the sexy book editor. I had been the editor of Leg Show and my publisher died a year and a half ago. And some very unpleasant, disreputable people took over the company. Benedikt Taschen had been a friend for about nine years, so he was the first one I called. He was kind enough to take me on. He said, "Come up with ideas." I had someone who had bought a lot of material -- photographs, proof sheets -- from a magazine company in California that had gone out of business. He said, "I have a whole lot of stuff and then there is Jaybird." I said, "What is Jaybird?" He said, "Ah, it's a disgusting hippie nudist magazine." I went, "Ding ding ding. Let's see this." Of course, they were wonderful. When I started digging in to it, it immediately made me curious. "How did something like this come to be? How were they ever allowed to publish it? How were they given the freedom to make something this peculiar?" Benedict went for it right away. It's just what he likes. He loved to see happy, earthy nudism and sexuality where men and women are quite equal.

Jaybird wasn't a legitimate nudist magazine, was it?

The people who started it were nudist. In fact since the publication, one of the Jaybirds who worked on it contacted me. He is still a nudist today -- a nudist in the Jaybird fashion, that is a day-to-day nudist walking around naked in his living room in the San Fernando Valley. As funny as the magazine seemed to be, there were people who took it seriously from beginning to end, even when it went completely crotch-centric. But you have to go back to 1958 when the nudists won the right to show pubic hair in their magazines when it couldn't be shown anywhere else in America. It only took a couple of years before sex magazine publishers began making nudist magazines so they could take advantage of this. But the people who started Jaybird in 1965 were really nudist. They were just into "swinging nudism." And that still goes on. I don't know if you've ever been to a nudist park, but --

...<snip>...

This is like no other dirty magazine that's ever been printed. Was this true hippie stuff?

They tried to make it a real nudist magazine, but in late 1965 publisher Milton Luros won this case in Iowa -- it was a real Comstock sting. They got Milton to send Jaybird through the mail. He had to go out there for trial, and he got away with it. He said, "If they let me get away with that in Iowa, I'm just going to push the envelope on pubic hair. If America wants more pubic hair, then I'm going to show it." He told all the photographers to get the models, men and women alike, to assume positions that would show more pubic hair. The old nudist ploy is that the models weren't just posing naked, they were doing useful activities like playing volleyball, barbecuing. So, when Milton started spotlighting the pubic hair, the real nudists pulled out. He replaced them with people who were available in North Hollywood at the time -- hippies. His company was so wealthy at this time, and he was starting to go into retirement, so he wasn't around to supervise the shoots. The photographers were hippies too, and they just started running wild.

Let's get genitalia-specific -- pubic hair is one thing, but with Jaybird we're talking about dual orifice openings.

Yeah, big spread shots.

Once pubic hair was allowed, did the government say, "You can show pubic hair, but you can't show a vaginal opening?"

There was nothing about this. There were no laws whatsoever. The law said, "We recognize that nudist magazines are not sexual." Jaybird was just breaking ground with every issue. They didn't know what was going to happen. They had the very best First Amendment lawyer in America, a man who was horribly crippled. To see him in person -- he had to walk with two arm braces, and swing his limp crippled legs along. And so when he would come in to the courtroom, they didn't want to be hard on him. Yet, he was a master of defense. And he was an enormous fan of pornography himself, so he chose to defend this. And he started pushing Jaybird, saying, "Do this. Go further. Go further." Because he was winning his cases. He wanted challenge. Consider that Penthouse didn't show pubic hair on the newsstand until 1970, and even then it was a long shot -- a tiny smudge of pubic hair -- at the time when Jaybird was having these wild spread shots.

...<snip>...

You know the photos would all be shot in Southern California. They would go to whoever's place was available, and look around and find props. When you see them with toys, that was because they were in a location where the person had children. Although the children were not there. Jaybird didn't use kids. A lot of nudist magazines did have children in them. Jaybird did not take that route because they were showing so much genitalia.

So this is a subtext that we don't want to explore too much, but did nudist magazines feature naked kids?

Nudist magazines always had kids in them because that's part of the lifestyle -- "It's not sex, it's family." Then in about 1972, the nudist magazines stopped selling well because regular magazines had pubic hair in them. Jaybird had gotten really over the top at that point. And then the "soft-dick" magazines went to marriage manuals, which is when the guys did have hard dicks, and there was actual sex, but it was all couched as instruction for people having marital difficulties. They actually had psychologists on staff to make sure the stuff was unassailable! They all only lasted about six months. And then they just went straight-out hardcore, adult bookstore stuff.

The adult bookstore was invented around 1968 or 1969. So all these magazines had a place to go. Suddenly the sales of the nudist magazines plummeted, and then the only thing the nudist magazines had was kids. There was a gentleman I talked to and was a nudist and worked on these magazines, but I knew that he had taken a fall for doing a nudist magazine called Nudist Moppets. He just took all the pictures of the kids and just made a magazine of them.

Was he finally busted?

Oh, yes. They busted him finally. I don't think he did jail time, but after we talked for an hour and a half he just openly started talking about this and kinda wanted to get it off his chest. And saying, "There was nothing else to do. I made nudist magazines for 20 years and suddenly we couldn't sell them anymore, but everyone knew that nudists liked kids because it's such a family thing, so I made a magazine for just the kids." Well, we know it was child pornography.

What are your limits?

What do you mean, "What are my limits"?

In terms of graphic limits.

What I will show and not show? Whatever is legal.

You must have been tested at times.

The things that are illegal, I don't have any particular desire to show. The things that are illegal are children and animals and necrophilia and people being genuinely hurt. The smaller issue -- with Leg Show we couldn't get into Canada because they said we were humiliating people. But the only people who were being humiliated were men who were aroused by humiliation. And so we were very carefully staging humiliation for these men, who were in fact not humiliated by it, but overjoyed by it.

...<snip>...

What do you think about nude war protesters attempting to form peace signs?

The strange tradition of naked war protest goes back to the Doukhobors in the late 1800s who came over from Russia to America seeking religious freedom like every other bunch of kooks. Whenever they were threatened, the Doukhobors would all take their clothes off. The sight of their nude Russian bodies would pretty much horrify everyone into submission. So, I'm suspecting that maybe this is the thread that runs through nude war protesters. Do they really think that people will be so horrified by their nude bodies that they say, "We'll stop the war right now -- make these people put their clothes back on!" Or is it that people will see the allure of their nude bodies and be lulled into making love, not war? I have no idea. I can't see it as a useful weapon unless you are a Doukhobor.

Read the entire article at Salon.com

Copyright © 2007 Salon Media Group, Inc. Reproduction of material without written permission is strictly prohibited. Reprinted by permission granted to Nudist-Resorts.Org by Salon.com.



About the Writer
David Bowman is the author of the novel "Bunny Modern" and the nonfiction book "This Must Be the Place: The Adventures of the Talking Heads in the 20th Century."

Country: USA | Posts: 1888

SFbayGuy
Forum Member

Posted - 10/31/2007 :  10:06:52 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Very interesting article. A case study in the law of unintended consequences. A magazine intended for the legitimate use of group of people gets hijacked by another group that could not otherwise publish the material. Love the cover photo that can be viewed on the salon link. Black and white photos can be so sexy.


Country: USA | Posts: 39 Go to Top of Page

Cheri
Forum Member


Posted - 11/01/2007 :  09:22:21 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by SFbayGuy

Very interesting article. A case study in the law of unintended consequences. A magazine intended for the legitimate use of group of people gets hijacked by another group that could not otherwise publish the material. Love the cover photo that can be viewed on the salon link. Black and white photos can be so sexy.



It reads the same as a group of not true nudists taking over a nudist resort. The nudist resort might go the way of the nudist magazines mentioned in the article.
Cheri

Doing what I can to positively promote nudism
-
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Country: USA | Posts: 3519 Go to Top of Page

Pete Knight
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Posted - 11/01/2007 :  09:55:18 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
This is a major problem for naturism, it is constantly being hijacked by sleaze merchants, that or some resorts struggle to stay open on nudism and move in the direction of hedonism and even blatant swinging, but as we all know sex sells!!

Pete Knight



Country: United Kingdom | Posts: 297 Go to Top of Page

balataf
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Posted - 11/01/2007 :  10:28:59 AM  Show Profile  Visit balataf's Homepage  Reply with Quote
"Black and white photos can be so sexy."

My late sister, Marge, was a professional photographer. Much of her work was with architecture, colonial arheology, and historic preservation. However, she did work in other fields, and most of her nudes are in black and white. Discussing this with her, we agreed that this medium actually does better in highlighting varied skin textures, which can be a very sexy mode for tasteful nude photography. It can even work better on fashion pics and, especially facial portraits, like those of Scavullo in decades past.




Country: USA | Posts: 661 Go to Top of Page

SFbayGuy
Forum Member

Posted - 11/02/2007 :  12:33:39 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Land use constantly evolves. A landed club may find itself squeezed out by encroaching development or alternate and potentially more profitable uses. People and their recreational habits are also constantly evolving. There are so many ways to relax and recreate it has to be a great battle for landed clubs to remain relevant and attractive to enough people to support continued operation. I can understand Cheri's and Pete's observation about change from a naturist/nudist point of view to a more sex-oriented focus. It's tough to resist change when economics are involved.

My point about the sexy black and white photo was not meant to interject sex into the discussion. I'm an avid amateur photographer. I appreciate the reference to Scavullo. He was a great photographer. His photo of Streisand and Kristofferson from "A Star is Born" is one of my all-time favorite images. The richness of shading possible in black and white is seldom possible with color photos. Naked bodies are perfect subjects for a photographer's paper canvas.



Country: USA | Posts: 39 Go to Top of Page
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