For gay men who came of age in the 1970s through the early 1990s, hiding the “International Male” catalog, which somehow seemed to magically appear in the family mailbox, became a rite of passage.

Retail catalogs from the 1970s and 1980s are often parodied for the fashions and lifestyles their thick volumes chronicled. But one column about the 1977 J.C. Penney spring/summer Big Book catalog ...

Lots of gay guys will tell you that the moment they knew they were gay was when they lingered in the underwear aisle of a department store as a kid, ogling the torsos on the packaging. Another version ...

Before there were Instagays and overtly gay underwear brands, the International Male catalog offered a somewhat coded window into homoeroticism, and the company behind it was happy to reap the rewards ...