Author Meets Critics: Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement

Abstract

This "Author Meets Critics" conversation focuses on David Johnson's book Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement (Columbia University Press, 2019). Johnson meets with four advertising and history scholars to discuss the following topics covered in the book: what physique magazines were and why there were important after World War II; advertisements in physique magazines; active government efforts to target and discriminate against LGBTQ individuals; important court cases contributing to advances in gay rights; the vulnerability of keeping and joining gay publication mailing lists; the imagined and virtual communities formed through gay publications and pen pal organizations; the market's place in shaping sexual identities; how gayness was defined after World War II; sexual identities' place in advertising and marketing; the international dimensions of physique culture and gay publications; and advice to advertisers, marketers, and other professors based on the reading of this book.

The Enigma of an Emerging Pink Economy in China: Pain Points, Entrepreneurial Opportunities, and Organizational Legitimacy1

“…Sender argued that “markets are discursive formations” and denied a preexisting entity of (gay) people wishing to consume (Johnson et al. 2019). Contrary to her argument, my findings suggest that in China there did exist a group of gay people eagerly anticipating the arrival of a business sector to fulfill consumer needs that regular businesses disregard.…”