| Intl. Notebook | Jun 24 2023 |
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Reading old magazines has helped teach us that things have not changed as much as some people would like you to believe. This issue of Man to Man hit newsstands this month in 1957. We've now seen trans stories in nine mid-century publications, and keep in mind we've not seen even a fraction of a percent of all the magazines ever published. The person under the spotlight this time is Abdel Ibrahim, and Man to Man editors say about him merely that he's “changing from a man into a woman,” and, “he's in an Egyptian hospital for an operation designed to help.”
This dispassionate tone has been the norm, from what we've seen, and shows yet again how the process of creating hysterical prejudice works. First, you train people to believe something unprecedented is occurring, then you frame that as a threat to people's “way of life.” But these old tabs serve as an inconvenient truth—sex reassignments have been around for quite a while, and before then, men who passed or attempted to pass as women go back into the depths of history.
During the mid-century era many trans people became national or international celebrities, from Coccinelle to Christine Jorgensen to Ajita Wilson. The knowledge of transexuals was so mainstream that the top-selling tabloid Whisper even published a 1965 story titled, “A Doctor Answers What Everyone Wants To Know About Sex Change Operations,” with the key word in that header—everyone—suggesting that the dominant reaction socially speaking was neither anger nor fear.
Elsewhere in Man to Man you get Zsa Zsa Gabor, including in one photo that looks familiar, sex myths of 1957, motel peepers, war, crime, fiction, a bit of nudism, and a bit of burlesque. You also get two pieces of art from popular illustrator Mark Schneider, who we've highlighted before. He mainly worked for Sir! magazine. We put together a collection of his covers for that publication which you can see here. You can also see three more issues of Man to Man by clicking its keywords below and scrolling down.
Man to ManZsa Zsa GaborMagda GaborEva GaborPorfirio RubirosaAbdel IbrahimTed KluszewskiMark Schneidertabloidbaseballburlesquenudismlgbt
| Femmes Fatales | Jul 15 2022 |
I'm not just pretty—I have relatively positive feelings toward the institution of marriage.
This nice shot shows Hungarian actress, singer, and socialite Eva Gabor. She was not quite as famous as her older sister Zsa Zsa, and she also wasn't nearly as as fickle—by which we mean she only married five times, as opposed to Zsa Zsa's nine trips down the aisle. Marriages ran in the family. The oldest Gabor sister, Magda, had six husbands. But two of them died on her, so technically she finished third in the marital grand prix. You're probably wondering if the sisters shared any husbands. Yes, lucky George Sanders married both Magda and Zsa Zsa. That must have made for some fun Christmas dinners.
Eva appeared in numerous films, including Pacific Blackout, Love Island, Captain Kidd and the Slave Girl, Paris Model, and The Last Time I Saw Paris. On television her most popular role was as Lisa Douglas on Green Acres. The Gabor genes didn't just provide talent and beauty—they bestowed longevity. Eva's mother died at 100, and both her sisters reached 99. You have to figure Eva would have gotten there too, but a bathtub fall followed by pneumonia did her in two decades early, aged seventy-six. The above photo shows her in 1941, when she was a tender twenty-two.
HungaryPacific BlackoutLove IslandCaptain Kidd and the Slave GirlParis ModelThe Last Time I Saw ParisGreen AcresEva Gabor
