But if you want to linger on this page a bit longer, there’s a little more to it than that. A new kind of competition is rocking the men’s magazine category, a world once as discreet as a man in a Brooks Brothers suit, with an Esquire or Playboy tucked in his briefcase. Even after GQ and Men’s Health changed the suit to Armani and the body beneath it to ““Abs, abs, abs!’’ the field remained quiet. Until now. Observe the covers on this page, all on the newsstand this past month. Men’s magazines today practically have to come in a plain brown wrapper. (““For the articles, right?’’ taunted a bookstore clerk as this reporter purchased research materials.)
The firecracker at this particular picnic is a rude, crude, skillfully executed new entry called Maxim. Its rivals are disdainful, despairing–and envious, too, because Maxim is also the biggest magazine-success story since Martha Stewart Living, with circulation soaring to 800,000 from 175,000 after only 15 issues, speeding past Esquire and GQ and heading toward Men’s Health (1.6 million). It’s also giving rise to debates about the end of literary civilization as we know it. (See, we told you this would be a substantive article.)
Maxim started in England, where for years the men’s magazine arena was neatly divided–literary on one side, pure skin on the other, with the skin category weakening as video, then the Internet, made porn readily available. Then, five years ago, a magazine called Loaded moved in, followed by Maxim and FHM. The formula was simple: babes (er, birds), beer and British football. The basic message was that the lads were going out for a pint, and bugger the consequences.
Maxim founder Felix Dennis peered across the ocean at the sleepy American newsstand. Women’s magazines, selling loads of copies without any pretense to a literary legacy, were fighting it out with come-hither sex cover lines. The men’s magazines were occupied with picking up National Magazine Awards at clubby luncheons, carrying on a tradition dating back to Esquire in the 1960s, and beefing up ““service’’ columns in response to Men’s Health and other narrowly focused interlopers like Cigar Aficionado. So Dennis pounced. His first editor, Clare McHugh, was an American woman, partly as an inoculation against Puritan wrath in the Colonies. Because Dennis was going with a blanket-the-newsstands Anglo strategy, he had to make sure not to get kicked out of Wal-Mart. He arrived with a tamer magazine than its English cousin, but half-naked women were plentiful, if occasionally exuding a certain photographic cheesiness. ““But it’s not about pictures of girls,’’ says McHugh, who left Maxim a year ago to (briefly) edit New Woman. ““It’s about the stance.’’ And Maxim has a distinct voice–as if it were edited by Homer Simpson, as one critic put it. A sample movie preview, of ““At First Sight,’’ the current film about blindness: ““We say: Poke your eyes out. Then say, “Honey, I’d love to see this mushy flick with you on Valentine’s Day, but–sweet Jesus!–I’ve been struck blind!’ ’’ Its opening manifesto declared, ““Leave that toilet seat up proudly!’’ Says publisher Lance Ford: ““We talk to guys like guys talk to each other . . . the other magazines are too earnest and serious.’’ Is it funny? Up to you. ““It’s Dumb and Dumber,’’ GQ editor Art Cooper says. ““Animal House,’’ says another editor, referring to the film many otherwise civilized males privately consider a cinematic masterpiece. Maxim is, however, that U.S. rarity: a mass-market humor magazine.
Maxim’s timing was impeccable. On the surface its frat-boy boisterousness (or outright misogyny) would make you think the feminist movement never happened. But it’s also the opposite: guys in the 1990s grew up being told to mind their manners, be sensitive and politically correct, share household duties and tend to their health. They missed the Rat Pack, and seek consolation by faddishly puffing on cigars. ““Guys know they have their inner swine rooting around in there somewhere, and they’re dying to let it out,’’ says Mark Golin, the current editor. ““People say it’s a clarion call to go out and be a pig, when really it’s to be a bit more honest.''
Maxim certainly isn’t pretentious. One recent article, the ““Palm Greaser’s Guide,’’ is typical. ““Our competitors would have done “The Culture of Palm Greasing,’ “The Psychology of Palm Greasing’,’’ says Golin. ““We just sent somebody out to hand out twenties and try not to look like a schmuck.’’ Maxim is in some ways a male Cosmopolitan: Golin and his deputy Catherine Romano are both proteges of Bonnie Fuller, who hypersexified Cosmo before moving on to Glamour. Her magazines are widely scorned as a parade of bite-size come-on lines, but she’s a whiz at phrases that slap you around a little. Golin is proud of his TOUCH HER RIGHT HERE cover line last year. ““The imperative is, “Buy this magazine’.''
Newsstand success won’t be enough for Maxim: it must win more subscriptions and advertisers. But the editorial debate between Maxim and its competitors is already a macho brawl. Are the philistines on the march? Or are the established magazines clinging to the Jurassic conceit that men actually want to read literary journalism? ““Nobody reads those magazines,’’ scoffs Maxim’s Ford. ““They’re like a deer in the headlights–that’s why they’re putting women on the cover.’’ The result can seem awkward. ““It’s a strange dichotomy,’’ says former Esquire editor-at-large David Eggers of its recent ““Cleavage Culture’’ issue. ““Having cheesecake on the cover, and right next to her breasts–Osama bin Laden. It’s just self-parody.''
The older magazines’ retort could be paraphrased as: Maxim is for cretinous, subliterate morons. They deny being influenced by Maxim envy. Esquire editor David Granger: ““It’s not a bad magazine,’’ he says. ““It’s just limited in its aspirations and ideas of what a man is.’’ He says his readership is older and more affluent. At GQ, longtime editor Cooper says the same thing, adding that ““these magazines have lots more in common with MTV than with classical magazines . . . we have no intention of changing.’’ As for January’s cover of model Heidi Klum (““Rhymes With Boom-Boom’’), he says, ““It’s nothing new. We put Julia Roberts on the cover in 1990.’’ His next four cover subjects, he says, are men. Says Maxim’s Golin: ““I’m going to start calling him “Boom Boom Cooper’.’’ At the younger-skewing Details, editor Michael Caruso acknowledges he’s added more sizzle, but says it’s a response to a drop in newsstand sales early last year, now corrected.
One thing is sure: more guy mags are coming. There’s Bob Guccione Jr.’s Gear, and the Maxim spinoff Stuff. And England’s FHM, even more babe-intensive than Maxim, is weighing an expensive American invasion. Manifest, a stylish general-interest magazine aimed primarily at black men, will launch in a few months. Manifest’s CEO James Bernard likes Maxim’s revolt against the ““preciousness’’ of other men’s magazines, though his own tone is worlds away. The ““preview’’ issue’s cover featured a cool male model. But as for what to put on the actual first issue, Bernard makes a confession: ““We’re having a big debate right now.''
