I recently came across this article by the Huffington Post titled “The Most Homoerotic Vintage Ads of All Time.” I used some of the ads featured in the Huffington Post article, but with a little searching, I found a few of my own to share with you. Oh the olden days, when men were men… who showered together. Soap seems to be the number one add, but there are a few others. There’s nothing funnier than unintentionally sexual ads, except maybe unintentionally sexual vintage ads. I’ve scoured the very back-ends of the Internet to bring you the best in early “hidden” homoerotica.
The US military had to have some way to advocate safe sex. One of the ads below is such an ad for safe sex, though it is more homoerotic than public service announcement. I remember doing research one time on American soldiers in the First World War. The head of the French army asked the American General Pershing if he would like the French to set up brothels for the American soldiers (this was customary with the French military so that they could monitor the prostitutes health). Pershing declined but begged the French general to never mention this to President Wilson, or he would withdraw American from the war. Wilson (if you know much about him) was a bit of a prude.
During World War II, it seems that Cannon Towels nearly cornered the market with their homoerotic ads of soldiers bathing together. There is even at least one soldier dancing.
Ivory Soap had its fair share as well. I guess they needed soap that floats because they didn’t want hands wandering to places that might seem inappropriate. Ivory Soap just took all the fun out of it.
Underwear and sleepwear seem to have worked their unintentional magic as well. Underwear advertisements have always been homoerotic in my opinion.
And with bananas, there is always a hidden joke. Make sure that you read full advertisement.
Of course, no one did homoerotic ads like Abercrombie & Fitch would do later in the early 2000s. Click on “Read more »” below to take a trip down memory lane with the photography of Bruce Weber and A&F Quarterly.
It always amazed me that they were advertising for clothes that the models were often not wearing. For that matter, most of the models were barely dressed at all. They sure did have some great campaigns though, and they were quite effective at recasting A&F from an expensive outdoorsy clothing company to a hip and modern clothing company for young people.
I don’t know what they are laughing at, but obviously it cracked up Princess Anne, Prince Harry, and the Duke. It looks like Harry started it. In the last picture, you can see that the Queen got a little tickled, but Charles just looks on with little humor in his expression. I would love to know the story behind this. It shows they are obviously human after all.
All in all, I found this a wonderful sequence of pictures.
It’s a complicated business calculating the precise date of the end of the world. There’s the Great Flood to consider, which may have happened around 4990BC, depending on who’s estimating. And the timing of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. Then there’s a bit of math that involves equating one day to 1,000 years. Do all that and it turns out that Armageddon will begin at 6pm on Saturday. That is, if Harold Camping has got his calculations and his reading of the Book of Ezekiel right.
The 89-year-old doomsday prophet, a former engineer, has prompted a tide of expectation, elation and derision after persuading listeners to his Family Radio Worldwide across the US and as far away as the Philippines to sell up everything and prepare for the beginning of the end of the world with the second coming of Jesus.
If all goes according to plan, those who have been “saved” by Jesus will rise into the air in the Rapture and look down as God smites billions of nonbelievers with a great earthquake rolling from city to city across the planet, and a bit of fire to boot.
Judgment day will begin at 6pm wherever you are. The mayhem will move west over the planet, wiping out cities, towns and villages.
In the US, some believers have given up their jobs and donated money they think they will no longer need to pay for more than 2,000 billboards across the country proclaiming “Judgment Day: May 21, 2011 – Cry mightily unto God. THE BIBLE GUARANTEES IT!”
Camping previously predicted that the end of the world would be in 1994. He blames that on an error in the math but says he has it right this time. “There is no possibility that it will not happen because our information comes from the Bible,” he told the Philadelphia Daily News.
Besides his mathematical formula, Camping has conjured up more “evidence” that doomsday looms. He has pointed to the re-establishment of Israel – which some Christians believe is a prerequisite for the second coming of Jesus and the Rapture – as a sign from God “that the world is getting near its end”. He has said that the earthquake and tsunami in Japan were a divinely organized foretaste of what awaits most of humanity.
Camping has also said that “gay pride” and same-sex marriage are “a sign from God that judgment day is very near”. “No sign is as dramatic and clear as the phenomenal worldwide success of the Gay Pride movement. In the Bible God describes His involvement with this dramatic movement … We will learn that the Gay Pride movement would successfully develop as a sign to the world that Judgment Day was about to occur,” he writes.
I, for one, will be standing outside when 6pm comes today. I don’t want to hit my head on my way to heaven, LOL. This will also be my last post if the Rapture occurs; so I will say goodbye to you all and will say hello again once we are in Heaven together.
Though this post is done with humor, Harold Camping does believe he has predicted the end of the world, which will actually come five months after the “Rapture” on October 21, 2011. I am a Christian, and I tend to believe the Bible:
Matthew 24:36
But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
Mark 13:31-32
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.
Therefore. I just can’t take these predictions seriously. I also don’t believe in a literal “rapture” as described by those who say we will be flown up into heaven.
Some notable rapture predictions include the following:
1844 – William Miller predicted Christ would return between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844, then revised his prediction, claiming to have miscalculated Scripture, to October 22, 1844. The realization that the predictions were incorrect resulted in a Great Disappointment. Miller’s theology gave rise to the Advent movement. The Baha’is believe that Christ did return as Miller predicted in 1844, with the advent of The Báb, and numerous Miller-like prophetic predictions from many religions are given in William Sears book, Thief in The Night.
1914, 1918, 1925, 1942 – Dates set for the end by the Jehovah’s Witnesses
1981 – Chuck Smith predicted that Jesus would probably return by 1981.
1988 – Publication of 88 Reasons why the Rapture is in 1988, by Edgar C. Whisenant.
1989 – Publication of The final shout: Rapture report 1989, by Edgar Whisenant. More predictions by this author appeared for 1992, 1995, and other years.
1992 – Korean group “Mission for the Coming Days” predicted October 28, 1992 as the date for the rapture.
1993 – Seven years before the year 2000. The rapture would have to start to allow for seven years of the Tribulation before the Return in 2000. Multiple predictions.
1994 – Pastor John Hinkle of Christ Church in Los Angeles predicted June 9, 1994. Radio evangelist Harold Camping predicted September 6, 1994.
2011 – Harold Camping’s revised prediction has May 21, 2011 as the date of the rapture.
2060 – Sir Isaac Newton proposed, based upon his calculations using figures from the book of Daniel, that the Apocalypse could happen no earlier than 2060.
I can’t help it, but I found this incredibly funny. Maybe I am just mean or have a warped sense of humor, but you know the woman passing by peed herself just a little after this.
Spell for a Man to Obtain a Male Lover Egypt, perhaps 6th century One of the great problems in studying the history of sexuality in the past, as with other areas of human personal life, is that the vast majority of sources come from sources left by social elites. In many areas and periods only the elites could write, and even where a wider section of the population could write (as, probably, in classical Greece), the texts that have been preserved, usually by monastic copying and in monastic libraries for Greek texts, were works produced by the elites.
In Christian Egypt (or “Coptic Egypt”) there seems to have been fairly widespread literacy – in both Greek and Coptic languages – and much popular material has survived on papyrus. The particular climate of Egypt has alone made this possible. We are in a position then to explore aspects of Christian society in Egypt which remain obscure elsewhere. One set of sources which has been made available to English readers are the various collection of ritual “spells”. These texts, dating from the first to the eleventh century, show a religious life quite different from that of the elite theologians who were writing at the same time.
One of the spells translated in this volume is for a man to obtain a male lover: evidence of a homosexual sub-culture, neither philosophic nor literary which we may believe existed at other times and places in the ancient world, but which has left little evidence.
Spell 84: For a Man to Obtain a Male Lover
This text contains a same-sex love spell commissioned by one Papalo to “bind” another man, Phello (this name literally means “the old man” or “the monk”), by means of a variety of powerful utterances (especially ROUS). Besides extending the scope of erotic binding spells in late antiquity, this spell also employs formulae common to several Coptic texts of ritual power. The folds in the text and the description of the text’s depositing (lines 6-7) imply that this spell was intended to be placed near the beloved man.
TEXT +CELTATALBABAL [.]KARASHNEIFE[.]NNAS’KNEKIE, by the power of Yao Sabaoth, ROUS ROUS ROUS ROUS ROUS ROUS ROUS ROUS (ring signs)
+++I adjure you by your powers and your amulets and places where you dwell and your names, that just as I take you a put you at the door and the pathway of Phello, son of Maure, (so alos) you must take his heart and his mind; you must dominate his entire body.
When he (tries to) stand, you must not allow him to stand When he (tries to) sit, you must not allow him to sit When he lies down to sleep, you must not allow him to sleep.
He must seek me from town to town, from city to city, from field to filed, from region to region, until he comes to me and subjects himself under my feet- me, Papapolo son of Noe- while his hand is full of all goodness, until I satisfy with him the desire of my heart and the demand of my soul, with pleasant desire and love unending, right now, right now, at once! Do my work
Notes: The reference to “his hand full of all goodness” may be connected with the Hebrew use of “hand” for “penis”. (Give a new meaning to the Spanish phrase mano-a-mano [hand to hand], doesn’t it?).
Ancient spells are not one of my specialties, but I found this very intriguing for two reasons. First, this is a Christian spell, and second, because I wonder if it works. If anyone tries this spell, and it works, then let me know, LOL.
And now for a little humor:
IIntruder² #9 – Ancient Egyptian Cock
http://www.IIntruder.TK One of them has been cursed by the Ancient Egyptian God Set, and the other finds it quite amusing…
As someone who has a Blackberry, I found this hilarious. It may be good reception on Verizon, but it does freeze up a lot because of the low application memory.
Joe
The Closet Professor 