Towels Poolside

Yesterday's Beach Towels kept naked bodies off the sand and rocks. Move the same towel poolside and the setting changes: cleaner, more private and a little more intimate. We're no longer at a public beach. We're lounging in someone's backyard—or at least pretending we are.

1. Tom Harnett on rainbow towel by Jim French. Harnett did both print and video work for Colt including the Buckshot Minute Man series in the early 1990s.

2. Chad Hazard on small white towel by Jim French c 1979. Hazard also did video work including Muscle Beach also released as Hawaiin Heat that same year. This shot was about 12 years earlier than the image of Harnett above, which shows French's return to similar themes in his work.

3. Todd Nugent on yellow towel wearing a denim vest by Jim French c 1985. French used a lot of streetwear, workwear, and denim in his shoots to push the macho look. What I find interesting is how this contrasts with the often shaved chests, butts, and legs and trimmed pubes and super coiffed hair...which is opposite that look imho.

The practical job hasn't changed much. The model may be wet from the pool, but judging by some of these photographs, he's just as likely to be covered in tanning oil. A towel gives him somewhere to stretch out without coating the concrete—or whatever he's lying on—with himself.

4. Chris Ingram aka Francois Papillon on brown towel by Jim French featured in Mandate October 1984 and also in Spurs #10 that same year.

5. Dan Delaney toweling off for the August 1977 issue of Playgirl magazine.

6. Billy Scott on striped purple towel in straw hat by Mel Roberts in 1967.

7. Joe LaManna reclining on a towel by Bob Harrison c. 1956.

 

And unlike the beach, the pool gives us furniture. Now the towel moves onto loungers and chairs, providing a soft, absorbent layer between wet, oily skin and somebody's patio furniture. It's practical, but it also completes the fantasy: nothing says an afternoon by the pool quite like a naked man stretched out on a towel.

8. Peter Stride on a blue towel by Jim French c 1985. Stride did video work for Colt including Buckshot Minute Man 12: Hairy Chested Men that year.

9. Dave Connors on a gray towel. My source suggests this shot was taken by Chuck Renslow of Kris Studios but published by Falcon Studios in 1980 before Connors began his adult film career. Apparently this type of arrangement was quite common at the time.

10. Dave Lash or Latche on a red towel (a classic bushnstache man) by Falcon Studios in the early 80s. The is shot was taken at Falcon's pool in Palm Springs.

 

Please leave thoughts, questions, additions or corrections in the comments. I am particularly interested in info about the models. Thank you, bns