pages of Strength & Health. Though editors were careful to deny it, the photos sold by mail were often more explicit than those featured in the magazine, including frontal nudity or posing straps which were merely "inked on" and could be rubbed away by the consumer. Later, magazines expanded their offerings to include other items such as slides, calendars, and posing straps. Connection to homosexuality Though largely created by and for gay men, physique magazines initially avoided overt references to homosexuality, using a number of pretenses to explain their content. Magazines became more relaxed in their adherence to these pretenses over time, occasionally incorporating coy sexual allusions into editorial and photographic content. Alibis Thomas Waugh identifies three main "alibis" which physique magazines used to mask their true purpose and audience. Some, such as Tomorrow's Man, relied on the pretense of promoting health and fitness, including short articles on diet and weightlifting, reporting on bodybuilding competitions, and commentary on models' muscular development. Others claimed to be providing reference photographs for artists. For example, a 1954 issue of Physique Pictorial claimed that the magazine was "planned primarily as an art reference book and is widely used in colleges and private schools throughout the country." A third alibi, mostly limited to European publications, was a claimed affiliation with the nudist movement. Waugh considers it likely that the true nature of physique magazines was an "open secret", with these alibis existing mostly as a polite fiction. An example of contemporary skepticism is a 1959 exposé in Sports Illustrated, which noted: ...and all the magazines, they keep saying, operate under principles that are almost embarrassingly respectable. When accused, as some of them have been, of catering only to homosexuals, they act shocked; editorially they protest that they are eminently "cultural," devoted to "esthetic appreciation of the male physique," no naughtier than The Atlantic Monthly... Adherence to these alibis became more relaxed over time. By the 1960s, most magazines had moved away from the rigid poses associated with bodybuilding and toward more relaxed poses and naturalistic settings such as the bachelor pad. References to homosexuality A subtle early signal to gay audiences was physique magazines' ubiquitous use of classical Greco-Roman imagery and language. This connection was embodied in the names of several publications, including Grecian Guild Pictorial, Apollo, Vulcan, and Young Adonis, as well as the frequent use of Grecian columns and props in photographs. Even