Diane Hanson, Editor of Adult Books and Magazines: “If you wanted real porn, the 70s was the decade”

Every new technology brings a new way of creating porn. As happened with the arrival of the Internet to the general public in the 1990s, Once the first cameras became available in the 1830s, many men took to taking pictures of naked women and distributing them. This is where the seed for “men’s magazines” is located, which will take a few years to arrive.

The first publications of this kind that we may call “magazines” appeared in France circa 1880 and sold as souvenir in Parisian cabarets at that time. But its growing success soon aroused the interest of the French publishing industry which, around 1914, began to include erotic material in old men’s magazines such as la life parisienne.

But then came the First World War. Those magazines were discovered by the fighting soldiers, who, returning home in one piece, took them with them in their knapsacks. American entrepreneurial spirit The booming post-war economy and the energy of the Roaring Twenties that were about to explode turned sensational magazines into a literal gold mine.

This is how the beginnings of the complex and controversial porn industry are explained in the first volume of a series of books on the history of erotic magazines that German publisher Taschen has just published in our country, entitled Diane Hanson: A History of Men’s Magazines. A collection of six books, with more than 4,000 images, that analyze the evolution of these publications over nearly a century, up to 1979.

As the title says, the group’s publisher is American Diane Hansonwho has been the publisher of Taschen’s sex book since 2001. A veteran of the porn magazine world who has co-created and edited such magazines as SuggestionsAnd Outlaw biker also leg width Since 1976, knowing the worst and best of business. We contacted her to tell us more about her career and what we could find in it History of men’s magazines.

Q: It has always been considered “born for porn” (born for porn), where does this fascination come from?

R was found. I started very early, with only six years old. I’ve always really loved drawing and at that time I was fascinated by women’s breasts, and I wondered what was inside those pointy bras. I pictured it, drew it, and then tossed it in the bottom of the trash can so no one would see it. A few years later, at the age of 14, I found a copy of Sexual psychopathy Written by Richard von Krafft-Ebing, one of the first books in history on sexual diseases. It wasn’t exactly a book intended for a teenage audience, so I hid to look at it in a corner of the bookstore.

Q: How did you get started in the adult magazine industry?

R was found. In 1976, when I was 25, I lived in an industrial town in Pennsylvania called Allentown. There she was dating a boy who was assigned by her boss, who owns several adult bookstores, to create a new porn magazine inspired by a fraud Founded recently by Larry Flynt. Given my interest in porn, I offered to help him. We thought “Yeah, we can do that. We have no idea how to do it, but we’ll get it.” So we convinced that guy to get us an apartment in New York where we could live and produce the magazine at the same time. He was called Puritanswas a lot solid, and was sold exclusively in adult bookstores. Entering this industry also forced us to deal with the mafia. It was almost impossible not to do that at the time. It wasn’t uncommon to get a call at 11pm to go to a meeting in a dark restaurant in Little Italy. It was a strange start. I got out of it all when I broke up with my boyfriend and started working with another porn editor, Peter Wolf, who was my true mentor. Soon I learned that our former president had been assassinated.

Q: For you, who lived it from the inside, what was the golden age of porn magazines like?

R was found. It really depends on your taste! Perhaps the first golden age of porn was the 1920s, when the first sexual revolution took place. World War I opened people’s eyes. Soldiers discovered these wonderful magazines and wanted to make them at home. Then, in the 1960s, the second sexual revolution occurred, leading to a major explosion of highly experimental sexual material. But if you want real porn, the 70s are your period. There were many hippies Made in California magazines, the craziest titles you can imagine. For example, there was a magazine called Navel Dedicated to pictures of navels and people sticking their fingers in their navels. There were magazines dedicated to Mud Wrestling, Men in Baby Suits and mldr; Really anything. It’s all in the books.

Q: I understand that the production process must be very tedious.

R was found. Starting one of these projects from scratch is complicated. eBay was a great ally in the beginning, to buy and talk to sellers. Through some of them I learned many things about the history of these magazines. I also found great collectors, like a guy from San Francisco who worked in the music industry and when he started making money he decided he was going to buy all the porn magazines that have been published throughout history. He soon realized this was impossible, but he put together an impressive collection. From the most banal to the most refined. He paid sums of money no one would have paid for some copies. I spent a very happy few days with him in San Francisco going through the boxes.

s. One of the key moments in this story is the appearance in the 1950s play boy. How important is this magazine, what has changed?

R was found. Porn is an adjunct to masturbation and thus has been around forever, but it is a story play boy It was really a turning point. It all started with Pin up, which was very important during World War II to prevent venereal disease in soldiers. If they masturbate to these images, they visit fewer brothels and catch fewer diseases. One of the magazines that always included a file pin up He was RespectableWhere a man named Hugh Hefner worked. Hefner left Respectable Because he was denied a five dollar raise and decided it was time to start his own magazine with which he intended to go a little further than his former bosses.

Q: What is this difference?

R was found. your post, play boy, since its first issue, in 1953, a character very different from all the competing characters: while they represented a masculine man, interested in sports and motor racing, Hefner chose a new version of the ideal man, more developed, who could succeed through consumption. The businessman sent the message that if you buy the right stereo, learn how to make cocktails, decorate your house well, and read books, you might get women. You didn’t have to be strong, masculine, or even handsome. You just had to buy the right stuff. This new paradigm resonated very well with baby boomers who spent their days working in offices. success play boy It was huge and its model was imitated by dozens of magazines around the world, which left a very boring scene in the sector, frankly, for at least ten years.

Q: The cultural explosion of the 1960s also reached porn, which became much more political. To what extent has feminism influenced men’s magazines?

R was found. It depends on the different waves of feminism. I belonged to the first wave in the late sixties, and it was feminism then sex positive Because one of the things that oppressed women was sexual oppression. Women were expected to marry, stay at home, and have children. But we wanted to have the right to have multiple sexual partners, to use birth control pills, to watch pornography, to have sex toys, to masturbate, to be recognized for masturbation… It was this kind of feminism that inspired me when I started my career. It helped me feel comfortable going to a sex shop and buying pornography. But then the 1980s and AIDS came along, and pornography evolved into very unhealthy forms that seemed harmful to women. This made the second wave of feminism sex negative Pornography was alleged to encourage violence against women. Suddenly, when I was going to a party and telling people what I was working on, men and women would argue with me and put me down. I didn’t feel like I was working against women: I’ve hired photographers, makeup artists, stylists, models, and mldr; He saw our work as a way to exploit men. They told me: “No, you force men to go out and rape women.” But there are studies that show the opposite: if a man masturbates, it is more difficult for him to commit acts of violence.

Q: The story ends in the seventies, why?

R was found. In the 80’s everything became more professional and boring. Publishers have figured out what has been selling and what hasn’t, which has greatly reduced the diversity and creativity of magazines. If putting a blonde girl with big breasts on the cover sells more, they just put blonde girls with big breasts on the cover.

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Q: Has Spain appeared in the history of erotic magazines?

R was found. Spain did not intervene in all of these magazines until the fall of Franco’s dictatorship. It did not happen as it did in Italy, whose market exploded in the 1970s. Although there was a fertile market for Spanish-language porn in Mexico and Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century, largely created by Spanish and Italian immigrants.