The photographs show that up through the 1910s, many men felt perfectly comfortable displaying physical affection in front of the camera: slinging their arms around each other, lying on top of each other, sitting on each other’s laps, kissing each other’s cheeks.
More casual physical male affection in my Edwardian-set media, you cowards!
Ibson has one photograph from 1920 of two guys leaning together so their heads touch, prominently sporting pansies in their buttonholes, and I think the slang term pansy was already common at that point, so it’s hard not to feel that this is a wink-wink nudge-nudge… although, again, we just can’t know.
By 1920, the term was definitely in use. It's actually much older than I thought.
I just can’t get over the cruelty of the cultural switcheroo from “Invest super hard in your relationship with your buddies! Here is an official government issued Buddy Book with a special page for My Favorite Buddy!” to “Why would any normal heterosexual man ever have strong feelings about another man or want to touch another man EVER, ew.”
I still think if you can figure out how to write fiction about this phenomenon, you might as well; I don't think it's widely known and it feels like an important—and devastating—step in this culture's calcification of "no homo!"
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2022-05-19 07:14 pm (UTC)More casual physical male affection in my Edwardian-set media, you cowards!
Ibson has one photograph from 1920 of two guys leaning together so their heads touch, prominently sporting pansies in their buttonholes, and I think the slang term pansy was already common at that point, so it’s hard not to feel that this is a wink-wink nudge-nudge… although, again, we just can’t know.
By 1920, the term was definitely in use. It's actually much older than I thought.
I just can’t get over the cruelty of the cultural switcheroo from “Invest super hard in your relationship with your buddies! Here is an official government issued Buddy Book with a special page for My Favorite Buddy!” to “Why would any normal heterosexual man ever have strong feelings about another man or want to touch another man EVER, ew.”
I still think if you can figure out how to write fiction about this phenomenon, you might as well; I don't think it's widely known and it feels like an important—and devastating—step in this culture's calcification of "no homo!"