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Are They Even Really Men's Magazines Anymore? (1 Viewer)

rockaction

rockaction

Footballguy
Has anyone read any of them lately?

Are they even written for men, or was that just a conceit anyway?

I'm not talking those bro magazines that the late nineties and aughts saw. Maxim, FHM, those types of mags that saw the bathrooms of sixteen year-olds everywhere.

I'm talking like GQ and Esquire and stuff like that. Who's writing them these days?

It's weird, I always remember them in doctor's offices and thought that they were stupid and that men didn't really need catered magazines, anyway, that one should or did know how to be a good man just by society's proscriptions writ large.

Keep humble, go to work, earn a living, have a family, make the rules with your wife as partner (or maybe not, for some folk), etc.

But they were always about conspicuous consumption and now they're just entertainment rags, it seems.

What happened?

 
I fondly remember going to not just one but two different barbers in two different cities who both kept Playboy in their magazine rack, along with the other sorts of magazines you mentioned.  This was as recently as the mid-90s!  

Nothing to add, other than remark on the cultural change.

 
IvanKaramazov said:
I fondly remember going to not just one but two different barbers in two different cities who both kept Playboy in their magazine rack, along with the other sorts of magazines you mentioned.  This was as recently as the mid-90s!  

Nothing to add, other than remark on the cultural change.
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You know what's funny about your comment to me? That they've franchised and/or made barber shops high-end now. It used to be a place for me to get a haircut and a shave and talk, etc. Now it's repackaged and sold and franchised, even. Ever hear of Roosters™? I got the worst haircut and a Bic™ shave there once. It was beyond belief. I thought I was getting a shave and she came out with razor cartridges.

That's all I have to add, too. I think our spaces have died either at the hand of capital or of something else.

 
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I will still read an Esquire or GQ article every once in a while, but it's now only online, and typically behind an Apple or Amazon paywall. 

As a teen and into my early 20s, I was a magazine junkie. Would have half a dozen or more subscriptions and could kill an evening with a coffee and the magazine section at Barnes & Noble. Now I'm lucky if I read through the free FW Weekly that pops up in a few restaurants or barber shop I visit.

 
I never really saw the appeal of them, and I hated the gendered views that they espoused.

I'll occasionally see their "best books for men to read"-type lists, which is a trash concept and the lists themselves are basically trash -- dominated by male authors (and a lot of white males) and usually weaker literary efforts.  Anyone bucketing books into "books for men" and "books for women" is missing a whole world of great stuff.

 
Don Quixote said:
I never really saw the appeal of them, and I hated the gendered views that they espoused.
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Nor I, but for different reasons. I had a sneaking suspicion that they were re-writing masculinity and that they were busy with the commodification of everything. It always seemed to me that the "lifestyles" espoused by men's magazines were typically soft and not in keeping with traditional notions of masculinity. Now that they're Harper's Bazaar-type rags, they've completely given themselves over to feminization. They're gendered alright, but they've been consciously re-worked in order that they might feminize rather than edify masculinity. They've always tried to re-write the rules for gentlemen (beginning with Ivan's Playboy™) but now they've gone whole hog in feminizing the process.

But I suspect redefinition of what it meant to be a gentleman was always at hand, which is my main sneaking suspicion about "men's" magazines. Seems real men don't read about being men. They just are.

The question for me becomes, "Do real men think about this ####?"

I would hope that they do.

 
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IvanKaramazov said:
I feel like I need to note for the record that have never read Playboy for the articles about how to be a man.  I was just there for the nudie pictures.

I hope that clears everything up.
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Oh my. Perfect. Same here. That's why we there, my intellectual muse. I know what Boorstin said about the long-form interview in The Image.

I was there for the n00dz.

eta* I mean my "intellectual muse" in the generalized sense, not you, IK. I just re-read that. I was speaking to a fictional muse that was telling me that I was wrong for reading the articles in Playboy, too. All sorts of scold in my world.

 
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rockaction said:
You know what's funny about your comment to me? That they've franchised and/or made barber shops high-end now. It used to be a place for me to get a haircut and a shave and talk, etc. Now it's repackaged and sold and franchised, even. Ever hear of Roosters™? I got the worst haircut and a Bic™ shave there once. It was beyond belief. I thought I was getting a shave and she came out with razor cartridges.

That's all I have to add, too. I think our spaces have died either at the hand of capital or of something else.
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It's definitely the government's fault. Used to be, to be a barber, you would apprentice... you'd buy scissors, a comb, and that jar of blue goo, and that's all you'd need to learn to cut hair. It was a trade anyone could pick up at low cost.

Then starting 15-20 years ago, a bunch of cosmetology schools started lobbying local and state governments to require barbers to get permits and cosmetology certifications. What was a $20 investment to learn now required three years and $50,000. And you couldn't just learn to be a barber anymore. You'd spend two weeks of those three years on basic men's hair and shaves. The rest was on highlights, perms, coloring, eyebrow waxing, and basically everything else that goes into cutting women's hair.

Then when you graduated, you couldn't just do $15 men's haircuts and make the money back as a barber. You had to charge $50 and become a "stylist".

It's crazy... it takes like 4 months to become an EMT, 6 months to become a cop... but three years to be a barber and ten years to become an interior decorator. Lobbying by certification schools has made a lot of careers very difficult.

 
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Runkle said:
It's definitely the government's fault. Used to be, to be a barber, you would apprentice... you'd buy scissors, a comb, and that jar of blue goo, and that's all you'd need to learn to cut hair. It was a trade anyone could pick up at low cost.

Then starting 15-20 years ago, a bunch of cosmetology schools started lobbying local and state governments to require barbers to get permits and cosmetology certifications. What was a $20 investment to learn now required three years and $50,000. And you couldn't just learn to be a barber anymore. You'd spend two weeks of those three years on basic men's hair and shaves. The rest was on highlights, perms, coloring, eyebrow waxing, and basically everything else that goes into cutting women's hair.

Then when you graduated, you couldn't just do $15 men's haircuts and make the money back as a barber. You had to charge $50 and become a "stylist".

It's crazy... it takes like 4 months to become an ENT, 6 months to become a cop... but three years to be a barber and ten years to become an interior decorator. Lobbying by certification schools has made a lot of careers very difficult.
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I agree with you. The licensing requirements for things that don't affect public safety or public confidence in institutions is just absolutely haywire. It's people using the legislatures as barriers to entry, and it's having the exact effects you're talking about.

 
I still have a subscription to Men's Journal and Outside magazines. Both definitely used to have more interesting articles but are becoming more geared to bros, Outside less so, but still is.

Last couple years have become pretty blatant about being shopping guides for expensive gear.

 
Agreed and it sucks. Every time I go to pick up Club International, Hometown Honeys, or Cheri....they've been out of stock.

 
Ironically, got home last night to a copy of Travel and Leisure in my mailbox. I have no idea when I subscribed, no idea if I ever paid for it, not getting a card hit for renewal, but it still shows up on occasion. Most of the time, it goes straight to recycle never leaving it's plastic bag cover, but might flip through it for old times sake.

 
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