In 1991, a new free magazine called Boyz appeared in LGBT pubs around London. The magazine was aimed at young, gay men and offered features on pop-culture, products and services that publishers hoped would interest gay men, including listings for venues and events that were themselves marketed at gay men and whose advertisements paid for the magazine’s publication and distribution. The magazine’s appellation was specific to ‘gay’
men, as illustrated by its strapline ‘Boyz is for gay adults only’ (See Figure 5.2). Whilst I am analysing and reporting on this, I maintain the language used for discursive texture, with acknowledgement of the problems of bi-erasure to which it still contributes (Barker et al., 2012).
(Figure 5.2, ‘Boyz is for gay adults only’. Detail of Boyz cover, 4 July 1991)
The earliest editions were modelled on Jackie magazine – a British title aimed at teenage girls. Boyz included horoscopes, advice columns about love and sex, and personal contact ads like the ‘Lonely Hearts’ columns that many newspapers and magazines ran. Telling me about some of the material inspiration for the magazine, Daniel32, one of the magazine’s founders, told me about its origins.
I think, behind it, for me, was the issue of talking to a guy who’s gone out for the night, who’s gone to G-A-Y [the club night]. He’s not met anyone. He’s gone home.
He’s on his own. He’s sitting in his bedroom. It’s 3 a.m. in the morning, and he’s feeling a bit down. He didn’t get a shag, whatever, and maybe he’s thinking about his body, and you know, all the issues that we all deal with, and we all deal with,
particularly in the harder times. Um, and that’s what it was supposed to be, a bit like an older brother giving a bit of guidance. Mostly, I think over the course of most of our history, we’ve achieved that. […] Um, and one of the things that we both, [my partner] and I, felt very strongly was that we needed to celebrate those parts of the gay world that it seemed to us a lot of people looked down their noses at (Daniel,
magazine director).
Daniel gives different examples in his interviews of what the social and politic climate was like generally, and for young men acknowledging their own sexuality at a time when Section 28 prohibited the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ in schools, and as national legislation, both reflected and shaped attitudes towards queer people (Weeks, 2007). Daniel’s example of the young man who feels alone in the middle of the night addresses some of the issues of
32 I have used pseudonyms for everyone who agreed to do an interview with me, whether or not they requested anonymity. As well as maintaining an ethical standard of protecting confidentiality, this disrupts an assumption that some informants require protection but others might not.
isolation that queer people can face, particularly when they have sought and missed connection within a community related to an identity that feels marginalised (Nodin et al., 2015; Tyler et al., 2016 forthcoming). Daniel’s example extends beyond the individual and he goes on to discuss different groups of people who are further marginalised within the ‘gay’
scene.
A ‘small ads’ section called ‘Trade’ appeared towards the back of each edition which included ads for local trades and services, including electricians, plumbers and builders, hairdressing and body piercing, language or music tuition, and rooms for rent (for the first example, see Boyz, 1 August, 1991, p.27). The section included a column titled ‘Escorts &
Masseurs’ with eight advertisements in the column’s first appearance (see Figure 5.3, below).
(Figure 5.3, from Boyz, 1 August, 1991, p.27)
The inclusion of ‘Escorts’ and ‘Masseurs’ in a single column raises interesting issues – theoretically, empirically, and in the lived experiences of those reflected in the research –
about the distinction (and sometimes lack thereof) between ‘sex’ and ‘body’ work. There is a blurring of boundaries both between what is (or is not) on offer and what is (or is not)
legitimate, legal and without stigma or legal ramifications. This is an important point, and one I expand upon in Chapter 7.
(Figure 5.4, Boyz 19 September 1991, p.35)
The early magazine ads, charged per word, were sometimes very brief, including only a name (usually a pseudonym), telephone number, identification as an escort, and one or two words that serve to be both physically descriptive and inspiring.
MARK. Athletic physique. Escort. 071[...] (Boyz, 24 October 1991, p31).
HUNKY, versatile escort, 30s. Kevin 081[...] (Boyz, 24 October 1991, p31).
Abbreviated codes such as VWE (Very Well Endowed) had crossover with personal ads. The abbreviations served not only to save the ad-payer money where ads were charged per word, but also constructed a knowable culture that could literally be read, which was at the same time familiar to readers of classified ads (Livia, 2002). Often, as in the ad for Garth, below, the reader is not alerted to the commercial aspect of the advertisement or the intended exchange, except that the advertisement appears in the column for Escorts (or ‘Escorts &
Masseurs’).
GARTH, 25, blue eyes, dark hair, 6’4”, 46” chest. 071[...] Or 0831[...] (Boyz, 24 October 1991, p31).
Garth’s ad illustrates how the textual body is quantified for the audience, with ages and measurements in order to convey a representation of himself. This queer, verbal and numerical construction of an imaginary body changed again as social and technological change permitted widespread use of visual texts which I discuss in the next chapter.
Within the first month of the column’s appearance, the staff at Boyz added a request for copies of relevant qualifications from anyone wishing to advertise a massage service (Boyz, 29 August 1991). Within three months, the format was changed so that there were two separate columns for advertising ‘Escorts’ separately from ‘Masseurs’ (Boyz, 24 October 1991).
The number of ads in each column were roughly equal for the next few months; thus, I was able to extend that range between volumes to saturate a theoretical sample to points where significant changes in the data were observable (Charmaz, 2006). As described in the previous chapter, I counted individual ads in annual editions to find patterns of change and stasis. My analysis of the number of advertisements in each column in subsequent years
reveals that there was a dramatic increase in the number of Escort and Masseur
advertisements overall, but that there was a significantly more dramatic increase in the number of advertisements for Escorts than for Masseurs (See Figure 5.5, below). For example, by 1996, there were 122 separate advertisements for Escorts compared to 17 advertisements for Masseurs 33.The proportion of Escort advertisements to Masseur advertisements remained significantly higher throughout the magazine’s history until it changed its editorial policy in 2007 to exclude sexually explicit material (Boyz, 18 October 2007). Prior to that, all Escort and Sensual Masseur ads were moved to a separate
insert/pullout magazine-within-a-magazine called Tug from 4 March 2006 to 11 October 2007. As well as the escort and sensual masseur ads, the more sexually explicit and sexually specific material was published within this title, as is still the case for QX and QX Men, as mentioned earlier.
The very first issue of Boyz […] it didn’t have escorts in and it didn’t have explicit pictures of escorts in, but it did have a pinup, which at the time was a, was a, you know, non-erect cock. [A: Mm-hmm.] Obviously, the history of Boyz: we went from that to an erect cock to pictures of escorts without their cocks to pictures of escorts with their cocks to fairly explicit pictures inside that went way beyond anything that I would ever have published before (Daniel, magazine director).
In our interview, Daniel talked about some of the social changes that he had witnessed, and arguably has had a part in changing. It was his description of Jackie magazine as the
inspiration for young gay men. In 2010 the management team decided to stop running the Escort advertisements altogether, a decision they later reversed (Field notes).
33 There is an additional advertisement for a masseur in the ‘Health & Beauty’ column that is not counted (Boyz, January 1996). The placement of ads in various columns added to the decisions I was required to make through the processes of data collection and analysis, particularly in reviewing which columns to include when the content between them could be similar or even literally identical. These ongoing challenges provide additional support for the use of theoretical sampling and applying semiotic and content analysis within a constructivist grounded theory methodology (Charmaz, 2006).
(Figure 5.5, Number of ads per issue in samples of Boyz magazine from 1991 – 2011) It was not uncommon to see one M$M advertiser with more than one advertisement in a single publication. I coded for repeated ads when I noticed that some ads were literally identical, some used the same name and telephone number (Matthews, 1997), and some used the same photograph or the model was recognisable as the same person. This caused
additional challenges because some advertisers used photos that may not have been their own. In those instances, I evaluated the possibility of the photos’ origin, in some cases finding the originals online using the Google Images search engine. Any attempt by researchers to use the number of advertisements – particularly from a single title – as an accurate indicator of how many people sell sex in a location would be deeply flawed.
London is unique to many other cities in that it has several free titles targeting the gay scene, and three that advertise Escort and Massage, which allows for comparisons to be made between titles, controlling for national or regional differences (e.g. Phua and Caras, 2008) in economics, geography, law and culture. A comparison of Boyz with other free titles such as QX and QX Men, and with newsstand titles such as GT (Gay Times) show variations in how
M$M advertise that are reinforced from the data collected in interviews with the M$M advertisers themselves which I discuss later. From a sample I analysed in June 2012, there were only 9 Escort and 1 Masseur ads in Boyz, where there were 61 Escort and 4 Masseur ads in the edition of QX published the same day (See Figure 5.6).
(Figure 5.6, Comparison of numbers of ads in different titles, June 2012)
The variation between competing titles (c.f. Deaux and Hanna, 1984) illustrates how sex work and body work advertising – and social visibility – is also influenced by the magazines’
management decisions about whether to include or exclude sex work and body work
advertising, editorial policies about sexually explicit content, and the marketing choices made by M$M on how they spend their money on advertising. Daniel tells me that Escort and Masseurs advertisements created a significant stream of revenue for publishers and websites in years when the number of ads gained critical mass. We discuss the decisions he has to make about the magazine’s ‘brand’ and the way it is positioned. As a title that is available for free, its business model is more like websites on the Internet. In our discussion, I mention that Gaydar has advertisers like international fast food restaurants. We share our surprise and
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Boyz QX
Masseurs Escorts
Daniel points to the scale of the user interface on the Gaydar website. ‘I know! I know! I can’t believe it. Based on traffic, of course. It is extraordinary, that.’ The introduction, accessibility and uptake of online advertising have also had an impact on the number of advertisements placed in magazines. Print media faces increasing competition with online media generally (Cane, 2009).
Equally, or perhaps more importantly from the perspective of men who advertise, the cost of buying advertisements must also be considered in assessing and evaluating the choices that people make about doing sex work. I discuss marketing strategies in detail in Chapter 8.