COLUMN: Maxim, Gear and Stuff
You knew it was just a matter of time before men’s magazines started to mirror women’s. The other way around never made it out of the minor leagues. I still remember the 1972 Cosmopolitan magazine Burt Reynolds and the “football” centerfold and the buzz it caused with the women in my neighborhood. After that, Joe Namath in panty hose was just comic relief and Playgirl showcased just a long series of nondescript pectorally augmented bimboys.
Aside from this one tarnished exception, women’s magazines have flourished because they have always been better at disguising trash in a wrapper of self help. Now men’s magazines are starting to follow suit. Just take a look at three of the new entrants: Gear, Maxim and Stuff.
While they lack some of the get-to-the-point full-frontal expediency of older, hormonally traditional magazines such as Playboy, Penthouse and Soldier of Fortune, they are the kind of eye candy that you can buy off the rack and take to the counter with almost a straight face.
“No, no these magazines aren’t for me, they are for my son. I want to make sure that he grows up to be a proper man. Lord knows we can’t rely on the cinema for decent role models anymore.”
Not quite sex, drugs and rock and roll, Stuff magazine demurs to sex, imported beer taste tests and the best buys on DVD players. Sure the cover, centerfold and most of the advertisements are festooned with young air-brushed and/or surgically altered women, but the women are attired in the far more practical bikinis and high heels rather than the altogether and high heels.
Great literary women’s magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Vogue have always made millions by shouting the message, “you will never be this beautiful, but come back next month and keep trying.” Men’s magazines have taken only a slightly different approach. Their mantra is “you may not be handsome or smart, but with the right SUV, digital audio equipment and the brief venture into your sensitive cache of brain cells, you can have all the babes who are in the women’s magazines who don’t exist in real life.”
It only sounds stupid when you put it that way. I must admit, at this point, that I am a hypocrite. Buying equipment, gear, stuff or whatever you want to call it, has always been a soothing balm for my broken heart. I recall fondly my first big break up and my first CD player that followed. Then there was the trip to Hawaii, the hot tub and the Honda CRX. At this escalating addictive behavior pace, breaking up again is going to have to involve a home equity loan and inheritance.
Despite this, I think it’s great that men and women are finding equality on the news stands. It is a tribute to journalism and the advertisers that make most journalism possible. Even if we can’t get along in the real world, we can commingle in virtual magazine world.
The artificially beautiful can share a four-color reality with the artificially rich in a seedy marketing brothel of air-brushed desire.
Dennis Hinkamp’s column appears every Friday and the off-chance Monday in The Statesman. Comments can be sent to him at slightlyoffcenter @attbi.com