MARK SIMPSON.com

The New Zeeland and South African Rugby team made the news this week with their nude rugby match on St Kilda beach. (UPDATE: In fact, the NY Daily News appears to have got a little overexcited: the players were not from the All Blacks and the Boks but local amateur players taking part in a mid-winter naked rugby tradition that has gone on for years - see Uroskin’s post below and on his blog.)

Held before their official match, and sponsored by ‘Bottom Bus’ (a local tour agency, allegedly), it looks at first glance like a realisation of the spornographic fantasy of those Dieux Du Stade calendars and those ‘Paris: City of Love posters’ with snogging rugby players advertising the Rugby World Cup last year. And perhaps in a way it is.

But the naughty slogans scrawled on their bodies and the general mayhem seems to have more of the trademark, old-style rugger bugger hazing humour. Porn and DDS (and UFC) by contrast, are a very serious business.

This seems more like a genuine, beery, blokey laugh.

Nice arses, though.

The ‘accidental’ removal of one beefy male contestant’s pants by another beefy male contestant in the new UK Gladiators series has caused some excitement. 

Now, as you know, I’m all for fit men pulling each other’s pants off, but this leaves me rather cold.  Partly because the shorts on Sky One’s new porno Gladiators are so skimpy in the first place that it’s not so easy to spot the difference between ‘on’ and ‘off’ - save when they’re off they look even more like be-thonged Chippendales.  But mostly because this accident was so carefully choreographed.

Note the handy close-up of some out of work actress in the audience screaming at the sight of a male buttock as if she’d just discovered her G-spot. 

Give it a few weeks and they’ll have these guys wrestling naked in a pool of KY ‘accidentally’ left on the arena floor.

(When that happens I’ll pretend to be jaded then as well - but inside I’ll be screaming louder than the actress.)

Tip: Donald K

Even more snogging rugby players, this time in an American online ad for a noise-cancelling bluetooth headset.

I don’t wish to appear ungrateful, but it’s clear that American ad men, even groovy online ones, really don’t get rugby. Or 21st Century sexuality.

As the lovely lads of Sandbach have shown us so graphically, two rugger buggers snogging is:

a) Nothing unusual

b) Guaranteed to make your teamates even more excitable

And the phenomenon of Manlove for Ladies would suggest that this chick is probably kicking herself she missed the action while gossiping on the phone with her gal pal.

How much bigger can the cotton-clad packages in men’s underwear ads get, I wonder, before they are literally shoved down our throats? And if they are, will any of us be so impolite as to gag? Even though good quality cotton is so absorbent?

Above is Beck’s latest sporno for Emporio Armani underwear, due to air in early 2008. Below is fellow-footballer Freddie Ljunberg’s 2006 Calvin Klein campaign.

Do these chaps live together? I mean, they seem to share the same type of fancy underwear, the same kind of bed-linen, the same barber - and the same dodgy shaver. They also seem to favour the same saucy bedtime positions - and apparently use the same b/w digital camera. They even look like one another, in that slightly disturbing twin-ish way that some boyfriends have.

In fact, the shots are almost a mirror image of one another: are they looking into our eyes, their own or each others? Even if they don’t actually share the same bed, it’s clear that Becks is doing Ljunberg doing Becks: which is impressive. Auto-fellatio and 69-ing at the same time. Just as well these guys are supple athletes.

Becks seems to sport an even larger Ljunbox - though seems to be less well-endowed when it comes to lighting. (Becks is two whole years older than Freddie.)

Is Beck’s bigger basket a case of post-production spornographic one-up-manship? Or is it just that Beck’s Brit meatballs are bigger than the Swedish variety? (Which at Ikea at least seem to be a little on the mean side.) I think we need to be told.

In the meantime, I must commend Mr Armani’s decision to draw a veil - or a white linen shirt - over Beck’s seriously daggy arm and shoulder tatts.

Tip: Towelroad

Today’s Sun carries an interview with England’s tasty pocket-rocket Ricky Hatton about his upcoming fight in Vegas this Saturday with World welterweight title holder Floyd Mayweather.

‘Pretty Boy’ Mayweather was in the news last week for saying to Ricky: ‘I wish I was in prison with you. I’d make you my bitch.’

‘Having another boxer threatening to do that to me is a first,’ Ricky admitted to the Sun. ‘But’ he said (I’m guessing with a twinkle in his eye), ‘I’d like to think I have got a fantastic bum.’

From where I’m standing, Ricky, it looks like you have. And you can trust me - I’m an expert.

But, given the infuriating bagginess of the boxing shorts you like to wear (which appear to have been made with some of your nan’s spare tasselled curtains), just to confirm how fantastic it is I think a closer inspection - and a road-test - is required.

And there’s no need to worry: we don’t have to go to prison. You could just come back to mine.

—-

PS  To those writing in to tell me that Ricky’s ‘no David Beckham’, or that he’s ‘really fat’ most of the time, or that he’s ‘ugly’, please note: I’m not claiming Ricky is of major socio-cultural importance or a ’sex god’. I just fancy him.  Here’s one, sorry, two reasons why.

Hollywood has apparently taken note of the global publicity surrounding uber-metrosexual English footballer David Beckham’s arrival in Tinseltown and decided to dust off America’s own, discarded metrosexual sportsman prototype, 1960s flamboyant, fur-coat wearing NFL quarterback Joe Namath and give it the big-screen treatment.

Jake Gyllenhaal is to play Namath - popularly dubbed ‘Broadway Joe’ - in a Hollywood biopic of the Hall of Fame sportsman who was the first American footballer to become a multi-media phenemonon and Madison Avenue model.

In other words, the actor who played a metrosexual cowboy will be playing the first metrosexual athlete. It sounds perfect casting - in a postmodern way. Gyllenhaal’s inability to convince as a cowboy, or a Marine, or a blue-collar NFL quarterback is just more grist to the mill of the inauthenticity of modern masculinity.

Jake’s pretty, bottom-boy looks also underscore something else: how Namath really wouldn’t cut it today as an object of desire. He just isn’t attractive or seductive or tarty enough. He looks like what he was: a reasonably nice-looking 1960s quarterback in a fur coat - or pantyhose.

Joe Namath’s most famous ad was this eyebrow-raiser from 1974 for Beautymist pantyhose:

Apparently Namath regretted the ad for nylons which brought out many of his male fans in rash, despite its rather heavy-handed ‘I’M NOT A FAG AND THIS IS A JOKE’ message. It may have been one of the reasons why America, with the possible exception of Dennis Rodham, failed to produce another ‘Broadway Joe’. That and the fact that America is sometimes a more conformist country than Switzerland.

If this ad were to be reprised by David Beckham today you would notice the following differences:

• He would look much better in pantyhose
• He wouldn’t say ‘I don’t wear pantyhose’. And if he did, no one would believe him.
• He wouldn’t be wearing anything else
• He wouldn’t laugh. Fashion, as his titanium-cheekboned wife has taught him, is a very serious business.
• He wouldn’t be selling them to women.

Boxing’s trash talk just got trashier - and highly spornographic. According to huge headlines in Britain’s most popular newspaper the Sun, big black American Welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather has announced that he wants to make England’s white scally Manc boxer Ricky Hatton his ‘Prison Bitch’.

‘He said he wanted to buttf**k me’ complained little Ricky, looking even paler than usual.

Ricky, mate, I have to say I really don’t blame him. And I mean that in a very loving way. (Though I’d have to insist you remove those mickey-mouse earphones first.)

But why wait until they’re sharing a prison cell? Why not do it ‘in the ring’ - like they do in Ultimate Fighting?

Actually, I’ve heard that there is a (semi) secret tradition in boxing of the loser giving it up after a match - apparently, it’s called ‘the perk’. (A term I rather like and plan to use: ‘I’m gonna perk your brains out, bitch’ and ‘I’m gonna give you such a hard perking’.) I’m told it’s not exactly obligatory, but not so rare either. It is, after all, what that film Fight Club was really all about.

So if Ricky loses, we’ll know why.

When it comes to mainstream or traditional sports the US is, compared to Europe, South America and Australia, somewhat resistant to Sporno - rather coy about strutting its stuff. Nonetheless, the US is home to specialist, completely non-coy S&M Sporno.

Say hello to Ultimate Fighting/Mixed Martial Arts, a new - and ferociously violent - sport from the USA in which two hyper-fit pleasingly muscled young men in Speedos grapple in a cage in positions that Chi Chi La Rue might blush at. Though in Ultimate Fighting, everyone fights for top.

Or maybe they’re just very feisty bottoms.

Unlike rugby or football, MMA doesn’t use Sporno to make itself more marketable or mediagenic - MMA simply is Sporno. Hardcore Sporno. Yes, I know, my filthy mind is working overtime again. But that doesn’t mean that UF isn’t filthy too.

MMA is also rapidly becoming very popular with spunky lads in the UK - earlier this year I attended a local ‘cage fight’ as a mate of mine was competing. The atmosphere was, as they say, heavy with testosterone - so I breathed deeply. And the short-haired thick-necked lads in the audience shouting ‘GWORRN!! STICK IT TO ‘IM, STEVIE!!’ certainly added the sense of excitement.

But since most of the ‘action’ in MMA is on the mat (the combatants are usually only on their feet for the first few seconds because the main objective seems to be getting your opponent’s heels behind his ears) I found myself slightly frustrated by the ‘live’ experience watching from beside the ring: most of the time I could see bugger all.

This sport isn’t really meant to be watched in the flesh. It’s designed to be consumed in the privacy of your own bedroom via voracious multiple-angle telephoto video camera lenses with a pause and rewind function. Enjoy.

(I don’t know about you, but I think the ref in this clip is getting in the way deliberately.)

Tip: Richard

By Mark Simpson, The London Times, 10 October 2007 [uncircumcised version

Ah, rugby. A man’s game. Played by real men. Big hairy men. With big chins. Nothing metrosexual about rugger buggers at all. A welcome respite from all that David Beckham, Frank Lampard love-me, love-my-shaved-pectorals stuff!

Wrong. So wrong.

For starters, rugby players have also become clothes-horses and walking endorsements for male vanity products. Fake-tanned, highlighted Jonny Wilkinson models designer clobber. Josh Lewsey is the face, or rather, hot, ripped, torso, of Nike Pro kinky lycra vests. New Zealand’s Dan Carter models Jockey underwear. Ronan O’Gara is the decorative face of an Irish jewellery company. While glam French fly-half Frederic Michalak, who seems to be his own mobile jewellery shop-window, has sashayed for Christian Lacroix, endorses a French condom brand, is the wrinkle-free face of Biotherme Homme cosmetics (a branch of L’Oreal), and is the eye-catching package for a skimpy underwear line.

And then there’s Welsh rugby star Gavin Henson, the prettier half of the Henson-Church celebrity couple, who likes to shave his legs and cover himself in fake tan and moisturiser before a match ‘because I like to look good for my team-mates’. David Beckham complained recently that Gavin Henson had stolen his gay fans.

To give you an idea how much has changed take a look the life story of the England Rugby strip. Not so long ago a rugby shirt was a baggy, shapeless beer towel that flapped around a hairy beer monster in a sweatband. But in the last few years it has morphed into a tight, tarty, stretchy muscle-top that seems to have been designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier.

It wouldn’t look out of place dancing under a spotlight on a podium at a gay nightclub. The 2007 World Cup strip features a saucy red arrow that runs from the right shoulder down to the left hip, which is supposed to confuse the opposing team. Perhaps that’s because it seems to shout: ‘If you want to score, flip me over!’

I’m sure there are all sorts of reassuringly practical reasons that can be cited as to why the England strip has changed so much of late, but clearly aesthetics is also calling the shots in rugby these days, which, like football, is now increasingly a form of show-biz. English rugby has gone ‘pro’ - and English rugby players now have ‘pro’ pumped, cut, muscular bodies they’ve worked hard on and that need to be shown off to their best advantage.

And oh, boy, do they show off. In the last few years rugby has become nakedly spornographic. Take a look, if you dare, at the Dieux du Stade French rugby Calendar, and accompanying, shrink-wrapped ‘Making Of’ DVD, featuring oiled, naked, shaved, designer tattooed rugger buggers naked in the locker room in poses that are frequently deliberately, provocatively homoerotic in a way that football wouldn’t countenance (unless it was after a match with a groupie present and filmed with a mobile phone).

Whilst showcasing the, er, talents of their own players, Stade Francais, the Paris team behind the Dieux Du Stade calendar, also invite especially blessed foreign players into their changing room. The eye-popping star of the 2007 calendar is humpy Scottish rugby player Sean Lamont, photographed on his back and on his front - showing the world his versatile endowments.

Dieux du Stade even has it’s own male cosmetics line’ Retour Au Vestiare’ - ‘Back to the lockeroom.’ (just make sure you knock before you enter.)

Phenomenally popular, the Dieux Du Stade sporno calendars have dramatically increased the popularity and coolness of rugby in France with women (who seem to like the homoerotic teasing) but also with men - gay and straight. Rugby sporno has helped make rugby seem that most modern, most covetted of things - shaggable.

Little wonder then that France is also the country that is tipped to win the Rugby World Cup. (Six of the French squad play for Stade Francais.)

After all, last year’s football World Cup was won by not so much by Italy’s superior football skills but their superior sporno. In the run-up to the tournament, Dolce & Gabbana recruited several of their national team’s players to be photographed oiled up and hanging around in the showers in their D&G underwear apparently waiting to gang-bang us - in a clear, if slightly toned-down, echo of Dieux du Stade (the same stunningly provocative photographer, Mariano Vivanco, worked on the 2007 Dieux Du Stade).

The current ‘Ce’st So Paris’ advertising campaign promoting travel to Paris ‘Capital of Love’ which features rugger buggers scrumming and snogging (‘Make love not war’) is clearly meant to be funny, which it is. But given the rise of sporno in the world of rugby it isn’t so absurd.

The only unbelievable thing about the ad is the fact that none of the fake snogging rugger buggers are nearly as buffed or beautiful as some of the real-life ones.
© Mark Simpson 2007

Get ready for the Men on a Mission calendar: 12 topless, buffed, young, male Mormons keen to show you the beauty of God’s creation. 

By Mark Simpson (Guardian, 20 Sept 2007)

‘As a sodomite, being knocked up by Mormon missionaries isn’t always an experience I look forward to. I don’t know about you, but that air-conditioning salesman look doesn’t really do it for me….’

Read the article here.