{"id":32539,"date":"2011-01-27T10:41:34","date_gmt":"2011-01-27T15:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=32539"},"modified":"2013-11-19T04:01:14","modified_gmt":"2013-11-19T09:01:14","slug":"what-seems-gay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/01\/27\/what-seems-gay\/","title":{"rendered":"What Seems “Gay”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nThis 1942 ad for Lifebuoy soap is a great example of shifts in collective cultural awareness of homosexuality. From a contemporary U.S. perspective, where most of us have heard homophobic jokes about not dropping the soap in the shower, two men showering together (even or especially in a military context) and using language like “hard” and\u00a0“get yourself in a lather” is undeniably a humorous reference to gay men.<\/p>\n

I think, however, that this was not at all the intention in 1942, where the possibility of men’s sexual attraction to other men wasn’t so prominent of a cultural trope. \u00a0It simply wasn’t on people’s minds as it is today. \u00a0Accordingly, the ad seems to be a simple illustrated recommendation, complete with a nice heterosexual prize at the end.
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nFrom Vintage Ads<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This 1942 ad for Lifebuoy soap is a great example of shifts in collective cultural awareness of homosexuality. From a contemporary U.S. perspective, where most of us have heard homophobic jokes about not dropping the soap in the shower, two men showering together (even or especially in a military context) and using language like “hard” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[257,15,253,54,309],"class_list":["post-32539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hygiene","tag-culture","tag-history","tag-sexual-orientation","tag-warmilitary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32539"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32548,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32539\/revisions\/32548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}