The production of these magazines, and of stories based on sci-fi and soap characters, popular since the 1970s, created the perfect infrastructure for Yaoi.
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Magazines for the "fandom", such as Trekkie magazines, are common and popular ways for people to interact with TV heroes. Mr Spock and Captain Kirk may be known to the average viewer as the original Star Trek heroes, but to the gay community they have been icons for three continuous decades, fan-fiction superstars who never morphed into Patrick Stewart. But another root feeding this type of art is the fan magazines that now proliferate around any popular TV show. Western Yaoi writers even borrow Japanese stories and heroes and rework them continuously for western audiences. Western Yaoi owes a lot to Japanese anime and manga, like the comic drawings above. "Ask my husband, " offers Helen Nightingale. The effect is, arguably, best seen in the bedroom.
While man on man is where it's at, these stories and images are used to explore female sexuality. Yaoi takes those perceptions in a different and fascinating direction. Our relationship with, and perception of, the body is clearly changing. All have been shown on mainstream television in some part of the civilised West. At the same time, artists and television producers were busy putting all types of human body on display in increasing variety, from the titillating pornography of new TV channels such as Babestation - which allow young men to text requests to young girls in bras and panties (soft porn in the palm of your hand) - to documentaries on wayward sexuality, beginning with the Ibiza Uncovered series, to the body stripped of flesh in Gunther von Hagens's corpse sculptures. The perfect male physique became a consumer image du jour in the 1990s. Men's bodies have rarely been put to better use, according to British Yaoi writer Helen Nightingale, who volunteers that Yaoi has allowed her to take a step beyond her own partial liberation as a feminist, to a fuller emancipation through exploring men.įemale liberation enjoyed headline status during those years hammocked between the sexy 1960s and the dull turn of the second millennium, but it was men's bodies that have recently become the subject of unprecedented fascination. Yaoi ranges from romantic descriptions of that liaison to full-on penetrative sex, described and drawn, of course, by those people who understand penetration best. The heroes lapse into homosexuality and engage with each other's bodies. In Yaoi, women writers and women artists tell stories and draw pictures of heterosexual heroes who confront their momentary lapse into homosexual love.Īll these parameters are important in such a highly stylised form of literature as Yaoi.
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Yaoi in Europe and America is mostly web-based but is increasingly produced for video and PC games, following the trend in Japan. "Yaoi" is the name of their strand of popular culture.
Homoerotic love, they believe, is in fact female territory. This is the territory that a new group of women writers want to seize. Men, psychologists told us, all have at least one homosexual encounter in their lives. Gay men enjoyed a modicum of violence-free liberation and gay iconography began to infiltrate the heterosexual consciousness. Sleek men began to stride the catwalk, elegant and confident in the footsteps of female supermodels. In the late 20th century, magazines such as Men's Health and GQ provided an outlet for male body idylls. He gasped as Caled's lips grazed the side of his neck. Hadrian shivered, suddenly remembering intimate touches that he knew were best left forgotten.
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His free hand lightly stroked the sharp curve of the sorcerer's throat.
'You've got a lovely neck," Caled whispered. But it's their gay side that is winning female fans, the creators of Yaoi tell Haydn Shaughnessy