This article has been revised and transferred to the Royale Studio blog by mitchmen
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The dreaded hand on hip pose is never far away in male beefcake shots but this one provides another opportunity to study the revealing contours of that impressive bulge and the model's meaty legs. His head seems curiously oversize in these frontal shots making for a very strange effect.
It's hard to know what to
make of this imagery across a space of 50 years. Despite the boyish
subject matter, there's no sense of anything under-age here. Royale
commonly depicted spanking situations and used uniforms to invoke
ideas of obedience and control, but discipline was virtually
non-existent in the Scout movement, it was a voluntary, leisure
pursuit - so I doubt that connection is being made here. The air of
authority in this picture makes me wonder if we are looking here not
at a Scout, but at a Scout Leader. In those, unreconstructed days,
Scouts and Scout Leaders were often the butt of jokes about unsavoury
activities around the camp fire - along the same lines as boarding
school dorm jokes. I suspect these images were intended to appeal to
men who relished that fantasy - of being seduced by the handsome
Scout Master - over that handy bale of hay, no doubt.
This model appears in
other Royale sets where he looks a good deal less intimidating than
this. I've not yet been able to name him. Any info from readers would
be welcome.
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