By Jim Gilles
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 7/12/22 – Screening Saturday night on July 16, at 7:15 PM in the Directors Guild of America at this year’s Outfest 2022 is All Man: The International Male Story, a film that tells the story of Gene Burkard, whose ground-breaking mail-order catalog set the gold standard for fashion and desirable bodies for gay men since 1979. Narrated by actor Matt Bomer and featuring interviews with Burkard himself, Carson Kressley, Drew Droege, and former International Male staffers, this intoxicating and eye-catching doc charts the rise and dominance of the magazine alongside the cultural shifts and health crises that forged the modern gay movement. Reminiscent of another recent documentary on Netflix chronicling the rise and fall of Abercrombie, All Man: The International Male Story is a fascinating watch that dives headfirst into the gay experience of the 80s.
Embracing fashion and masculine power, the iconic catalogue spoke to so many during its run, including those who would use the magazine as their own personal spank bank. Swimming in the waters of muscle fetish and male fantasy, The International Male helped put its idea of the perfect male physique into the general consciousness. Directors Brian Darling and Jesse Finley Reed recount the story of International Male and how it shaped the image of the masculinity and menswear, especially for gay men. If you are unable to attend the theatrical screening on July 17, you can access the film virtually as of July 19, 8:00 am, where it will be streaming online.
In the late 60s/early 70s, muscular male imagery was virtually nonexistent save for the signature daddy type look – with gray flannel suits and Sta-Prest slacks. Even in films there was very little of what we view today as being the ideal male body type. Gene Burkard (1930-2020) as in the U.S. Air Force at the time of the Korean War and later managed to get a job in Europe representing Schlitz Beer which was sold at many U.S. military bases in Europe. He traveled around Europe, saw lots of bars and also saw the difference in European fashion for men. In the 50s and 60s, London’s Carnaby Street had lots of specialty shops for men. There Gene saw lots of dinky men’s underwear, as well as leopard-print suits and sexy, loungey playtime things to wear. Puritanical America was very slow to catch on to the underwear revolution that was happening in Europe. In the U.S. in the 60s, the images of masculinity were Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson in their movies, the Marlboro Man and the Brawny Paper Towel guy. Gay men were portrayed as silly and flamboyant like Liberace and Paul Lynde.
Burkard changed all of this, returning to San Diego after living and working in Europe for 10 years. He rent a cottage in Ocean Beach, the shady side of town where lots of gay men lived. He arrived with steadfast ideas about fashion to bring into both gay and straight culture. While in London, he had seen in a shop window a suspensory (for men with hernia problems) and thought that it could be reshaped as men’s underwear. In San Diego, he decided that he could make money in a mail-order business selling men’s apparel, a pattern-maker and cutter to put together a new type of underwear that he called the “jock sock” (essentially a version of the modern jock strap). At first, he advertised the “jock sock” in The Advocate, after taking out an ad in Playboy with its circulation of 3 million, the order started rolling in.
Burkhard recruited a secretary to help him. This woman, Gloria Tomita, would go on to help shape the International Male Catalogue. She had an eye for what fit perfectly on the male body, whilst Gene dealt with the fashion angle. An unstoppable dynamic duo that would go on to great success, Gene and Gloria single-handedly sold their deepest erotic male fantasies and audiences metaphorically gobbled it the hell up. At the time, AH MEN Magazine was selling risqué men’s apparel in a way similar to what Bob Mizer was doing with Physical Pictorial, but Burkhard found that appropriate “too gay” and ended up a cross between a magazine and a catalogue with an emphasis on “freedom for the male.” He wanted to promote the image of virility and a lifestyle of good-looking men who were leading exciting lives in exotic international settings.
From the start, International Male projects a fantasy where “the look” was more important than the garment. In the words of Gene Burkhard, “We never said we were a gay catalog, but gays ‘got it.’ I mean, gays looked at it and said, ‘My God, that’s me, and I can get this in the mail because it’s not saying gay anywhere.”
Using beefcake, mostly heterosexual, white models, the images in International Male in the 70s were basically about sex, but the appeal with the use of a military look (Foreign Legion) and rugged outdoor apparel appealed to both gay and straight men. Orders had to be phoned in, as no online database existed at the time, so whenever a new issue was imminent, the phones would be ringing off the hook. As International Male evolved from niche to mainstream (with a shockingly 75% female consumer base shopping for their men!), computerizing the system became a necessity.
Lifestyle marketing was all the craze in the 80s, centering International Male at an ideal crossroads. There may have been a litany of distribution issues in terms of getting the actual products from the catalogue to customers, but that did not stop International Male’s soaring popularity. At its highest peak, the catalogue impressively sold upwards of $120 million in sales! Over the years, many famous models and actors have posed for the catalog, such as Shemar Moore, Cameron Mathison, Charles Dera, Christian Boeving, David Chokachi, Gregg Avedon, Reichen Lehmkuhl, Rusty Joiner, Brandon Marcel, Scott King and Brian Buzzini.
For gay men who came of age in the 1970s through the early 1990s, hiding the International Male catalog, which somehow seemed to magically appear in the family mailbox, became a rite of passage. The appeal of International Male remained largely low-brow, appealing to working-class fantasies about being dressed like a dandy on the make. The body type of the Adonis was not new or interesting, but the idea of putting flamboyant clothes on a hunky male model is what sold the apparel.
The downside of such ideal male body images is that it makes many men feel inadequate. With the onset of AIDS in the mid 80s, a decade of homosexual acceptance ended and the escapist fantasies of International Male seemed out of touch with the grim realities of the time. A number of International Male employees died from AIDS and eventually Gene Burkhard was approached to sell out his business to the giant mail-order business of Hanover House.
The 1990s saw a revival of the International Male business under Hanover Direct as men’s fashions from Europe like Versace re-shaped the demand for menswear in the USA and International Male found its image working once again but losing its old gay customer base. There was an attempt in the early ’90s to hire heterosexual photographers, to pair the models with women and to tone down the clothes As regular retail department stores began selling edgier menswear, the importance of International Male declined.
We definitely get a sense of how sexiness sells in men’s apparel from this film, but we don’t really hear about what it was like to work for the catalog. The last mailed catalog of International Male was published in 2007. We see an elderly Burkhard in the parts of the film talking about his interest in designing men’s clothes and his lack of interest in how the business actually ran. Burkard died on December 11, 2020.