The second coming of The Naked Issue

This is my last Editor’s Letter at Gay Times as Editorial Director, so I thought I’d be especially cheeky with this month’s issue – bringing back the magazine’s infamous Naked Issue. A highlight of the brand’s publishing calendar in the early 2010s, these editions would see the magazine bring back the soft porn of its heyday and revel in inches upon inches of male flesh.

As someone more of the dyke persuasion, the magazine’s history as a saucy gay and bi male magazine never quite spoke to me, but during my first week at Gay Times I met our very talented Senior Art Director Jack Rowe, who introduced me to so much of the history of the publication, allowing me to see it in a new light. He talked about his ambition of bringing back the Naked Issue but, this time, with a much more diverse cast rather than the white, cisgender men who dominated the centrefolds at the time. 

Two years later, this is what we’re doing – helming this issue with a naked cover shoot lensed by Richard Dowker and feature written by Ryan Cahill, getting extremely close and personal to different activists from our community, across a range of ages, experiences, backgrounds and body types, but all committed to queer liberation in its most vast, expansive form. It’s unfair of me to speak too much on this topic, so I’ll hand over to Jack – a daring creative designer behind some of the magazine’s best moments over the past few years whose vision shaped this issue.

“There’s a big chunk of Gay Times history in the early 2000s where it felt like every other issue was The Naked Issue. That’s how I remember the magazine growing up, some guy’s massive sculpted pecs staring at me from the top shelf in WHSmith.

That era’s long gone and the magazine has evolved to reflect a broader, more intersectional queer experience. But I’ve always loved the boldness of The Naked issue as a concept and often thought how we could bring it back for today.

When queer people are being told to be less visible, books are being banned and campaigners are trying to shut down cruising spaces. Having a naked issue says to the world you will see us and we’re not hiding.

And in the words of George Michael: ‘Are you gay? No! This is my culture. Fuck off.’”

With love and mischief,

Megan Wallace and Jack Rowe