Jack William James is a Scottish-Irish poet whose accent is neither. He lives in East London. He has a wide range of interests, including Shakespeare, psychology and queer sexuality. He says that writing hot wee poems for a sexy menswear brand is his dream brief.
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Ribbed cotton brief. Available in white, black and grey. Inspired by underwear worn in Physique Pictorial in the early 1960s. Embroidered with ‘Live Without Censor’ in the Eric font on the back left.
‘Live Without Censor’
Prior to the decriminalisation of explicit gay content in America in 1969, the main way that homoerotic images of men were distributed in the West was in the form of physique magazines. Bob Mizer’s Physique Pictorial was the first and most famous of these. First printed in 1951, it featured handsome men in very little clothing, sensually posing for the male gaze, under the pretence of being fitness content. Many of the models were queer, some were sex workers. Scandalous for the time, the magazine was attacked for its ‘lewd’ depictions and ‘obscene’ references to homosexuality. The case was brought before the Supreme Court of the United States, where Mizer fought a series of legal battles to defend the magazine from censorship, and eventually won the right to show erotic images of men in print.
‘Live Without Censor’ is a poetic phrase written by J. William James that encapsulates Mizer’s fight for freedom of expression. We have replicated the cut of brief shown on the cover of a 1962 edition of Physique Pictorial. The brief comes in black, white and grey–evoking the greyscale colour scheme of the magazine. The label at the front of the brief features a stylised silhouette of a Mizer man.
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Eric braved the beach in his Bob Mizer briefs
and posed on the sand as a pure-hearted man.
I watched him with love as waves lapped his calves—
it’s sublime to see a queer not censor their style.
J. WILLIAM JAMES
