Tuesday, August 31, 1999

Latest men's magazines gnarly, not nice

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BY JULIE IRWIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer

New men's magazines aim to attrack young male readers.

        Recipe for launching a successful men's magazine: Dump the $3,000 Armani suits, the advice on how to make a martini, the sly references to women and their charms.

        Add real-life gore stories such as “Gnarliest Sports Injuries of All Time” and “I Saw My Wife Get Killed by a Bear.” Celebrate cold beer and fast cars. Let nymphomaniacs publish their diaries and introduce your readers to the joys of bondage.

        And most importantly, make sure there's a woman — with long hair, scant clothing and an expectant look on her face — on the cover, and many more inside.

        The new breed of men's magazines — Gear, Stuff and the wildly popular Maxim — aren't really men's magazines at all. They're guys' magazines that encourage readers to get in touch with their “inner swine,” in the words of one editor, magazines that are aimed at young men who want to ogle beautiful women and expensive gadgets and not feel guilty about it.

        And there are apparently a lot of them who want to do just that. Maxim began publishing its U.S. edition two years ago and now claims a readership of 1.15 million, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which tracks magazine sales.

        In its short life it has rocketed past Esquire (circulation 680,000) and GQ (circulation 707,000) and is approaching the success of Men's Health, the best-selling men's magazine with a circulation of 1.6 million.

        Buoyed by its success, Maxim just launched Stuff, which promises women, beer, sports and gadgets. Gear, which is published by Penthouse's Bob Guccione Jr., is celebrating its first anniversary. P.O.V. and other wannabes line the magazine aisles with breasts, bathroom humor and secrets on scoring.

        Sales are similar locally. For a territory that covers Cincinnati, Louisville, Indianapolis and Columbus, United Magazine Co. in Winton Place distributes about 5,000 copies of Maxim to grocery stores, drugstores and booksellers. The company distributes about 3,000 copies of GQ, 1,300 of Stuff and 1,000 of Gear.

        “Just from what I see and notice putting them out every day, Maxim sells really, really well most of the time and does better than a lot of older mainstream magazines, like GQ and Esquire,” says Scott Francis, periodicals manager for Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Norwood.

        Although the formula for guys' magazines is simple enough, the reason for their success isn't. An increasingly competitive magazine market, a backlash against political correctness, and trends in women's magazines are all factors in their sales. So is another obvious fact:

        “Sex continues to sell,” says Joe Austin, assistant professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University. “Pornography has been more and more pulled into part of the mainstream. Porn starlets have been hanging out with the jet set, whereas before they were pariahs.”

        We can thank the British for the magazines. Publications there such as Maxim and FHM have captured a large market in recent years by appealing to the “laddism” movement, which celebrates nearly naked women, drinking and soccer. The magazines' success convinced publishers to head for our shores, but they tamed their publications a bit in the U.S. editions.

        “I think the British ones are racier and obviously bolder,” says Alexander Wooley, a Canadian writer who has published stories in the British versions and keeps an eye on the American ones. “It's almost like the hooligan movement.”

What young men like
        Mr. Wooley believes the magazines appeal to a spirit of rebellion in many young men. Their careers and relationships may be unstable or non-existent, but there's a sense of fraternity that comes from gross-out humor, advice on how to eliminate your boss, and pictures of young starlets removing their bikinis.

        “It's a permanent sort of Fort Lauderdale-Daytona Beach-spring break mindset,” he says. “They're even more based on fantasy than Cosmopolitan. They never really talk about how to build a career so you assume the people who read them don't really have careers.”

        Mr. Austin sees something else at work. The young men who make up the magazines' target audience have had more exposure to media than any other generation in history, so they are looking for something new.

Even ads shocking
        Irony often works, as do celebrations of anything trashy — cheap beer, junk food, trailer-park culture. Even the advertising in the guys' magazines is geared toward shock, with mainstream companies using bullwhips and blow-up dolls to sell cigarettes and running shoes.

        “The sophisticated stuff may have been attractive in the '80s, but this generation has been marketed to for so long, that group is so saturated with media messages to buy, that they've become very clever at decoding these messages,” Mr. Austin says. “That advertising tack (of promising sophistication) is losing its effectiveness.”

        Mr. Austin also sees the lasting effects of the sexual revolution in the pages of the new guys' magazines. But that isn't limited to Maxim, Stuff and Gear alone. Pick up the pages of any women's magazine and you'll see tips on better orgasms, bigger breasts and other sex tips.

        Even Redbook — safe, middle-class Redbook — promises advice this month that will “turn so-so sex into oh-oh-oh!” And CosmoGirl!, a new magazine from sex-crazed Cosmopolitan that targets girls ages 12 to 17, offers tips on turning a crush into a boyfriend.

        Can Maxim Jr. — with pictures of Ashley and Mary Kate Olsen disrobing and advice on rubbing out your junior-high teacher — be far behind?

       

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