A NEW range of magazines for men has invaded the news stands. Sporting trendy titles - Esquire, GQ, FHM and Arena -they all retail for £2.20 to £2.50 and appear targeted at a specific group of men. Worried that he might be one of them, JOHN LISTER plucked up courage to buy them and report. IT HAS been said that women's magazines fall into three categories. Vogue tells women what an or- ety. gasm is; Cosmopolitan and Options tell women how to achieve orgasm; and Women's Own tells them how to knit one.
Men's magazines, as one might expect, are rather cruder in their subdivisions.
There is the no-nonsense soft-porn wank mag on the top shelf head). (often categorised as 'male interest' by John Menzies).
And for those 'do it yourself fans with more specialised and demanding hobbies there is an immense variety of practical guides, covering everything from angling to clock-making, ferretkeeping, traction-engine maintenance, photography and of course home improvements.
Some of these hobbies carry their own built-in macho status; customising cars, for example, boosting the power and altering the external styling to win gasps of admiration from other men, and, some hope, from easily-impressed women.
But the four new glossies featured in this review are clearly targeted at a new audience. They don't care much about the outside world, and are satisfied with twelve-line reviews of books and CDs.
They don't appear to make or mould anything themselves. There is no practical advice on anything whatsoever. The flashy motors on display are the ready-made variThese readers are welloff but rather sad and insecure men, who seek social acceptance and status not by doing things or knowing but by buying things, ready-made, which they are told are trendy. The sort of man summed up, I think first by Alexei Sayle as a LOMBARD (lots of Ford Probe. money but a right dickLavish The target audience is plain not only from the lavish production on heavy-grade coated paper, but from the adverts, plugging expensive 'male fragrances', over-priced watches (depicted worn by smoothies embracing scantily-clad beauties, with the slogan 'designed to perform'), designer magazines can be left out clothes and crappy pre- in the car or at home, tend sports cars like the while the porn is safely hidden away.
Indeed there is a lot of Even a GQ feature on pretending, posing and the woman from the verballing going on in Wonderbra adverts, and these magazines, without an FHM feature on Elle much serious content. Macpherson ("The To judge from the cov- woman they call the ers, which with the occa- body. And why") manage sional exception tends to series of semi-clothed feature an inviting but photos which keep rude coyly attired photo of a bits artfully concealed. supermodel or female Of the four, GQ magafilm star, they sell on the zine (Gentlemen's Quartitillating hint of sex, but terly) aims slightly higher inside, the pages are con- in the market, with propspicuous for the lack of erty ads at the end for naked women. These Belgravia flats at £795,000 and 298 acre mansions.
It also typifies the formula of all four, in offering a combination of the trivial, superficial and apparently street- wise without ever actually telling its readers anything of any substance. A classic example is in a feature on sex as 'a substitute for conversation. Why go to all the trouble of talking to someone when you can shag them?, which includes a memorable piece of advice: "Sex is a substitute for humour. If you say the word "SEX" often enough, people are sure to snigger. Suggested cure: replace the word "SEX" with the word "BOSNIA. No one's going to laugh at that."
For sad GQ readers who know nothing and care less about Bosnia or anything other than their own image and pulling power, this will no doubt be a handy contemporary reference. Of course the flip can be funny even as it teeters on the edge of the offensive.
A spoof survey on 'What kind of man are you, anyway' asks for readers' reaction: "26. A woman who is uncomfortable watching you masturbate: (a) Is uptight and a waste of time. (b) Probably needs a littie more time before she can cope with that sort of intimacy. (c) May need glasses. (d) Shouldn't have sat next to you on the bus in the first place."
Esquire claims to have conducted an opinion poll of women (interestingly only those aged 20-35) with a strange mix of questions, such as which government minister would they choose for a one-night stand (strangely Michael Portillo came top!) and Would you rather gain five stone, or be run over by a truck?' (a staggering 35% opted for the truck).
Long-dead
But for all the acreage of print on sex and sex objects it is impossible to escape the view that the readers of these magazines aren't getting much, and that the reason is because they are as boring and superficial as the articles they are served up. Features on the long-dead Steve McQueen and Brigitte Bardot in her heyday are hardly breaking any new ground.
Perhaps the funniest features in each of them are the fashion spreads, which appear to show gawky and over-paid readers how to spend hundreds of pounds - to look like a prat or a wino.
A nerd in a £1,000 suit or a £500 jacket is still a nerd.
But when will they produce a men's magazine showing us how to knit one?