The Closet Professor

For those of us who grew up before the internet, shopping catalogs were about much more than shopping.

The Sears and Roebuck catalog and the JCPenney catalog arrived at our homes several times a year, filled with everything from tools and appliances to school clothes and Christmas gifts. They were meant to help families decide what to buy.

For some of us, however, they offered something we didn’t fully understand at the time.

The men’s underwear section.

I suspect I’m far from the only gay man who spent a little longer flipping through those pages than was strictly necessary. There they were: page after page of handsome men modeling briefs, boxers, tank tops, and undershirts. They smiled confidently into the camera, athletic and fit, showing just enough skin to capture a teenage boy’s attention.

At the time, I probably told myself I admired their physiques because I wanted to look like them.

Looking back, I know that wasn’t the whole story.

I wasn’t really interested in whether the underwear was made by Hanes, Jockey, Fruit of the Loom, or BVD.

I was interested in the men wearing it.

The experience didn’t end when the catalogs were put away.

Trips to the department store offered another opportunity. Growing up in Alabama, that usually meant Gayfers or Parisians. Walking through the men’s department almost inevitably meant passing the underwear aisle. Boxes lined the shelves with photographs of smiling models wearing the latest briefs or boxer briefs. Hanging displays featured larger promotional photographs, and every brand seemed determined to convince shoppers that buying their underwear was somehow the key to looking like the handsome man on the package.

I never lingered very long.

I was terrified someone might notice me looking too closely and somehow think I was gay. So my glances were brief—a quick look at one box, then another, before pretending to be interested in something else. Looking back, it’s funny to think I believed anyone was paying that much attention to me, but when you’re a closeted teenager, that’s how fear works.

I almost always shopped with Mama, never with both of my parents. As I got older, she trusted me enough to wander off into the boys’ or men’s department while she shopped elsewhere. Those few minutes alone felt like a small freedom. I could spend just a little more time in the underwear aisle, picking up one package and then another, pretending to compare brands when I was really getting a closer look at the model on the front.

Of course, I couldn’t have explained why.

I wasn’t consciously searching for attractive men.

Or perhaps I was—I just didn’t have the words to admit it, even to myself.

As I got older, the catalogs evolved along with me.

Eventually I discovered International Male.

Unlike Sears or JCPenney, International Male wasn’t trying to sell everyday basics to the average American family. It specialized in fashion that was bold, stylish, and unapologetically sexy. The models were more glamorous, the photography more dramatic, and the clothing… well, sometimes there wasn’t much of it.

Then came Undergear.

Although it marketed underwear, swimwear, athletic clothing, and casual wear, everyone knew the models were just as much a part of the appeal as the products themselves. The photography celebrated the male physique in ways that mainstream department store catalogs rarely did. It still wasn’t pornography, but it certainly wasn’t pretending the models were incidental either.

By the late 1980s and into the 1990s, even mainstream advertising had changed.

Calvin Klein transformed men’s underwear advertising into something far more than product photography. Athletic young men became the centerpiece of campaigns that celebrated confidence, sexuality, and the male physique. Tom Hintnaus posed atop a rooftop overlooking Santorini, and a few years later Mark Wahlberg’s famous campaigns became nearly impossible to escape. Imagine walking through Times Square and looking up to see a larger-than-life Mark Wahlberg towering above the street in nothing but a pair of Calvin Klein briefs. Underwear advertising had become a cultural phenomenon, and department stores suddenly displayed enormous posters of impossibly fit men, making the underwear aisle even more difficult for a young gay man to walk through without lingering a little longer than he intended.

Then there was A&F Quarterly.

Published by Abercrombie & Fitch beginning in the late 1990s, it hardly resembled a traditional catalog at all. Part fashion magazine, part travel journal, and part photography book, it was filled with Bruce Weber’s evocative images of beautiful young men and women. Officially, it existed to sell clothing. Unofficially, many people looked forward to each new issue as much for the photography as for the merchandise. Like so much of what had come before, it celebrated youthful beauty while carefully remaining on the respectable side of what mainstream retailers considered acceptable.

Looking back, it’s fascinating to see how the presentation of the male body evolved. The wholesome Sears and JCPenney underwear models of my childhood gradually gave way to fashion photography that was increasingly artistic, increasingly sensual, and increasingly aware that beautiful men could sell just about anything. The catalogs evolved, but so did the culture.

Today, if a teenager wants to see handsome men in their underwear, he can find thousands of images within seconds on his phone.

My generation had to wait for the mail.

Or hope that Mama needed to stop by Gayfers.

Those catalogs were never intended to become part of anyone’s coming-out story.

Yet I suspect they played that role for far more gay men than anyone ever realized.

Sometimes our first crushes weren’t classmates, movie stars, or musicians.

Sometimes they were the smiling guy modeling briefs on page 487 of the Sears catalog.

And somehow, that was enough to make us turn the page just a little more slowly.

I also can’t help but smile at the irony.

As a teenager, I was convinced that if I looked at those underwear boxes for even a few seconds too long, someone would somehow know my secret. I was so careful to keep my glances brief, convinced that my eyes would betray me.

Today, I’m writing an entire blog post about it.

Maybe that’s the greatest difference of all—not that the catalogs have disappeared, but that I no longer have to pretend I was only looking at the underwear. 

I felt like I should add the bonus picture below, because of all the CK models, Cooper Koch might be my favorite.

*Rusty Joiner was born in Montgomery, Alabama, and I was obsessed with him for a while.