Evolving Thai Homoeroticism, Male Nudity, and Multiple Masculinities in Gay Magazines Since the 1980s-2010s

Abstract

This article details the masculine imaging of young male nude models. They posed for the homoerotic photos published in Thai gay magazines from the 1980s to the early 2010s, analyzing how these images reflected patterns of male homosexual desire. We consider how Thai gay men perceived these masculine images and how the representation of male nudity responded to and sustained Thai gay men’s sexual imaginations. It is not only the textual forms of discourse in the articles published in Thai gay magazines that tell us about the country’s gay culture and history. The images of the naked men photographed in these magazines tell us much about the culture of masculinity in Thailand, and the roles of media and the market in the formation and evolution of Thai gay culture. Drawing on visual sources, we investigate the relationships between male nudity, homoeroticism, and gay men as they were linked to one another in the consumer culture that formed the matrix within which modern Thai gay identity evolved over the three decades from the 1980s to the 2010s. Five male body types are identified in gay Thai magazines across the three-decade period of this study: the natural body, the muscular body, the metrosexual body, the full-frontal nude body, and the male body with tattoos and earrings. We explore the cultural and social contexts behind these homoerotic relations and the changing representations of the masculinity of the Thai male body. This article details Thai gay men’s desire for masculine sexual partners, drawing on the images in gay magazines to gain insight into the changing types of masculinity that Thai gay men have regarded as sexually desirable across recent decades.