Los Angeles, 1955. You run a little “physical culture” magazine: musclemen, sunshine and not much else. Your readers want to see more. The U.S. Post Office wants to see less, and it can shut you down. How much skin can you mail before the inspector reaches for his rubber stamp?
Pass the Censor
A game about the golden age of beefcake.
Ten issues, eight inspectors and one rubber stamp. Three seizures and the Post Office shuts you down.
How to play Pass the Censor
- Dress your model. Every issue you choose how much he wears: gym shorts, a towel, briefs or just a posing strap.
- Size up the inspector. Each issue goes through a different postal inspector. Read the card: some are prudes, some are… understanding.
- Mail it. The more you show, the more copies you sell. Go too far and the issue is seized. Three seizures and you’re out of business.
It really happened
In the 1950s, before gay porn could exist in the open, there were “physique” magazines. Officially they were about bodybuilding and healthy living. Everybody knew who was buying them. The most famous was Physique Pictorial, launched by photographer Bob Mizer in Los Angeles in 1951.
The models wore the posing strap, a tiny pouch that covered just enough to keep the magazines legal. Under an 1873 law against “obscene” mail, the Post Office could refuse to deliver them, and postal inspectors investigated publishers, photographers and even subscribers. In 1954 Mizer himself was convicted of mailing obscene material: photos of bodybuilders in posing straps. The conviction was later overturned.
In 1962 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that three physique magazines could not be banned from the mail. Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote that they were no more objectionable than the pictures of female nudes that society already tolerated. By the end of the decade the posing strap was gone. Today’s gay porn, this site included, started there.
