Ad nauseam

National Review, Oct 13, 1997 by Rich Lowry

WHY is Susan Faludi writing for one of our magazines? Its a question that might occur to any male lured into picking up the October issue of the mens magazine Details. The cover, a photo of beautiful woman TV stars in black underwear ("The Girls That Make You Lose Remote Control), suggests nothing untoward. But, inside, here is Miss Faludi, author of the feminist screed Backlash, interviewing author Sadie Plant about her daft new book arguing that the digital revolution heralds a new era of female dominance. "Lots of men, says Miss Plant, "are undergoing whats maybe a sort of post-traumatic stress.

Well, I guess so. This isnt exactly the sort of backlash we had in mind. Details editor Michael Caruso explains the Plant interview in his letter to readers with an air of resignation, but holds out some hope: "There are, of course, a few places left where its still (to sample James Brown) a mans mans mans world. The football field, for instance. "Women may rule the future, but at least we still have football, writes Caruso. "Thats a fair trade, right?

Maybe not. The cover of the September issue of Esquire asks: "Does Football Still Matter? The September GQ features an article on the "sadomasochism of football, titled "My Body, My Weapon, My Shame. Its author, a former Big Ten player, confesses, "I did bad things for football. Because I could. Because I was 19 years old, weighed 270 pounds, had 5 per cent body fat and muscle to burn. Forget touchdowns, I played football for the chance to hit another man as hard as I could to f him up . . .

Behind the cleavage-intense covers and breezy celebration of "guy stuff in todays mens magazines lurks a crisis of confidence. What does it mean to be masculine in the 1990s? If anyone knows, he is certainly not editing a mens magazine. Todays mens titles, from the upscale and literary (Esquire, GQ) to the practical and outdoorsy (Mens Health, Mens Fitness, Verge, Mens Journal) to the hip and girl-crazy (Details, Maxim, Mens Perspective), are all geared to a new feminized man. The Cosmo Girl is out of style. Get ready for the Cosmo Guy.

At the front of the latest Details, there are three consecutive advertisements: a black-and-white ad featuring a waifish model for the cologne "Obsession for Men; a two-page spread for Evian water, including a poem: "In me lives a wildcat who chases the moon and races the wind . . .; and a color photo of a man in his undies for "Versace Intensive. Not so long ago someone might have flipped through these pages and asked: Is Details a gay magazine?

But the sensibility of those ads pervades the mens-magazine market. "KISS WITH CONFIDENCE AND BEAT BAD BREATH and "CALM DOWN! CALM DOWN! DEAL WITH PANIC ATTACKS are cover lines one might expect from YM or Seventeen, but instead they appear on the September issue of the British GQ spin-off, GQ Active ("Admittedly, says the article inside, "80 per cent of these [victims of panic attacks] will be women, but that still leaves 250,000 to 600,000 of your Y-chromosome-bearing colleagues suffering a debilitating condition. . .).

Whats happened? First, the old masculine attitude toward personal appearance has all but disappeared. If childhood memory serves, my fathers acts of personal up-keep were mostly limited to shaving and putting on a tie. So, its hard to imagine him interested in articles on "A Flat Belly for the Beach (Verge), or, the three new mens fragrances for the fall season (GQ), or even, for that matter, "The New Fall Suit (Esquire). But somewhere along the line men became less concerned with being strong and silent, and more worried about making themselves pretty.

Its this attitude that drives the consuming interest among men in fitness and health. The hottest mens magazine is Mens Health, with a circulation of 1.5 million, up 400 per cent over the last six years. "Lose 10 lbs Fast, boosts its October cover, which features a loving photo of a buff guy in a bathing suit. Considered a model for the rest of the industry, Mens Health is full of advice on how to make low-fat chicken wings, how to wear leather jackets, and, especially, how to pump up your biceps and tone your gluteals.

Oddly enough, nearly every body part is trumped in mens magazines by "abs. Having a tight, sculpted stomach is a cherished goal of the Cosmo Guy. "This is tough for me to admit, writes one work-out expert in Mens Fitness, "but here it is: Some people hate me. Not because Im beautiful . . . but because I have abs. And not just any abs. I was in an Abs of Steel video. Since the practical effect of having steel abs is limited how many people see your stomach on any day? my guess is that the ab obsession arises because, just like women, men now want to look like the models in underwear ads.

To dispel the suspicion that they are encouraging men to act like girls, mens magazines have a couple of fall-back positions. The first is "stuff: laptop computers, cell phones, sport utility vehicles, satellite dishes, global positioning systems, all those gadgets and appliances that are supposed to thrill the normal guy. On the one hand, the magazines revel in how these gizmos are the exclusive realm of man. On the other, the term universally applied to them is "stuff ("tons of useful stuff is the motto of Mens Health). Stuff, of course, has boyish connotations, suggesting that this realm of man isnt to be taken too seriously.