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Authenticity, Moralism, and Sexuality

      There is, of course, nothing self-evident about the equation of authenticity and sexual morality. In fact, many of Macfadden's detractors conceded that True Story may be an authentic reflection of American culture, but they were not about to conclude on these grounds that it was, as Macfadden claimed, a “great moral force.”⁸⁸ To ensure not only that his readers would perceive True Story's confessions as authentic, but that they would also understand authenticity in the proper sense, Macfadden deployed once more his endless sidebars, solicitations, and editorials. All of these were placed in the service of restricting the range of authenticity, of governing the scales on which it could register, and of assuring that it was placed in the service of a conservative sexual politics.

      At this point it is essential to recall Macfadden's particular brand of morality. At the turn of the century, Macfadden's primary argument against Comstock was that social morality required that the truth of the “sex principle” be expounded in “all its details.”⁸⁹ In the 1920s, Macfadden understood True Story in precisely these terms: it was an unflinching register of true life, and for this reason an unparalleled source of moral instruction. For example, in a 1925 editorial that recalls the argument of Coryell's “Growing to Manhood,” Macfadden argued that American children will learn about sexuality one way or another: “If you refuse to satisfy youthful curiosity by giving them the truth properly and reverently presented, they often absorb from questionable associates vulgar and vile distortions of some of the most divine phases of life.” And such “vile distortions” gleaned from the subjugated knowledges of “questionable associates” had grave social consequences: “They have made a hell on earth for literally millions of poor victims who have been reared amidst falsehoods.” From this point, it is a short step to True Story's moral value. As an antidote to the danger of such “vulgar and vile distortions,” Macfadden celebrated True Story as a didactic source of “naked truth, reverently presented”: “If you are armed with the truth you cannot be deceived by evil. You know the nature of its influence, and you have only yourself to blame if you fall by the wayside. True Story is a great beacon of light which sheds a brilliant radiance upon life's pathway. It shows you the way. It warns you of your dangers. It is a school of experience from which you can learn without suffering the tortures of the poor struggling victims that are caught in its meshes.”⁹⁰ Macfadden's claim that True Story is a “school of experience” perfectly captures the magazine's moral conceit. It was a “great beacon of light” precisely because it set the “naked truth” in bold relief.

      Throughout the pages of True Story, Macfadden returned over and again to the claim that experience, unfiltered and reverently presented, was an intrinsic moral guide for disillusioned American youth. In 1922, for example, he dramatized the instructive character of authentic experience by telling the story of a fiction reader's brush with death. The reader in question had patterned her life on ideals taken from novels and subsequently “paid the price that comes with ideals that are false.” In True Story fashion, Macfadden then made the moral of the story explicit: because novels do not “teach life as it is,” they are an unworthy source of ideals. True Story, by contrast, because its confessions have “truth for a background,” will provide ideals that will “stand the storms and stress of life.”⁹¹

      A year later, Macfadden argued that although experience is unquestionably the “greatest teacher,” there are some situations in which the price exacted by experience is simply too high. He provided the example of poison. Although lessons from experience are more powerful than lessons from books, it is not worth learning about poison firsthand. This, Macfadden argued, is the virtue of True Story: through it you can “learn from the faults and failures of other people.” It provides all the benefits of learning from experience without the burden of experience itself. This is Macfadden: “Experience as it is dramatically presented to you in True Story is indeed an invaluable teacher. While you read with fascinating interest the dramatic details of the trials and struggles of the characters presented therein, you are learning from others through their personal experiences—the greatest of all teachers, and it is a fascinating pastime. True Story fills an invaluable need. It presents the truth as it is lived by those in your own sphere of life.”⁹² In short, Macfadden claimed, “True Story Magazine came into being with the sole ideal of living up to its name, to tell the truth about life, so that others might learn its lessons without enduring the suffering consequent upon so many of these personal experiences.”⁹³

      The years made Macfadden only more insistent and more explicit about the moral value of True Story. In April 1924, he penned a two-page editorial titled “True Story Magazine: A Great Moral Force,” in which he laid out the “high ideals back of this publication.” He argued that True Story “readers are made better morally, mentally, spiritually and even physically through the influence of the stories published herein.”⁹⁴ Rehearsing arguments forged in his early battles with Comstock, Macfadden argued that ignorance facilitates personal and cultural decay: “The Evils that were everywhere devitalizing the race, the tragedies that have crushed human lives often beyond recall were presented in such great detail that I could not fail to see the truth in all its appalling aspects. And standing out from these mountains of human catastrophes was the ever present excuse: ‘I DID NOT KNOW!’” Americans “fell into Evil,” Macfadden concluded, because “they did not recognize its character.”⁹⁵

      Against the power of a misrecognized evil, “True Story lights life's pathway. It sheds brilliant rays of knowledge upon the road that everyone must travel.” It “sets up warning signs,” it decries “selfishness and greed,” and it exposes the “tremendous force” of the “sex instinct.” On this last, volatile subject, Macfadden emphasized that True Story “clearly indicat[es] the necessity of living in conformity with the great moral law laid down by Jesus of Nazareth”: “THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH.” True Story Magazine, Macfadden concluded, “clearly and emphatically put forth this great Biblical truth.” By putting this truth in the form of “strikingly dramatic, intensely interesting stories,” True Story provided “education in the form of entertainment.” And, I might add, entertainment in the form of confessions in which no moral was left to the imagination of the reader.

      So confident was Macfadden in the high moral calling of True Story that he set up a “ministerial advisory board.” Composed of clergymen from a variety of faiths, the board was given full authority over every article slotted for publication in True Story. Although there is no way to verify this, Oursler claimed in 1929 that since the board's constitution not an article had been printed in True Story without the full approval of the ministers.⁹⁶ What can be verified is the energy Macfadden spent reminding his readers that each true story had already received clerical sanction. To publicize his ministerial board, Macfadden occasionally dedicated a page or two of True Story to reprinting quotations culled from ministers and other readers. Typically arranged in two columns under an oversized title that announced True Story as a “Great Moral Force,” these quotations were presented as evidence of True Story's moral virtue and they functioned as a constant reminder of how the bed shadows that filled the pages of True Story were to be read.⁹⁷ The quotations themselves are deeply repetitive; a small selection may stand in for the lot. A certain Mrs. O. H. England wrote, “The stories are morally refreshing, for while they take us through the tunnels of life, they always bring us safely back to the sunlight of duty's path. There is an uplifting afterthought and theme in its stories which distinguish them from and make them superior to any other stories of sex and life. After one reads some of the magazines of sex stories, there follows a feeling mental degradation and an inclination to conceal them from the eyes of our associates. But I am always proud to have my copy of True Story lying in a conspicuous place.”⁹⁸

      Surrounding Mrs. England's excerpted opinion were twelve other quotations of similar length and similar substance. From a broader perspective, this page of quotations testifying to True Story's “moral force” was itself surrounded, in the proximate issues, by more quotation-filled, minister-laden pages bearing witness to the “sunlit path” of True Story. Taken

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