If beautiful women, sports and alcohol are the secret to unlocking the male mind, then “lad” magazines have found the golden key.
Maxim, FHM and Stuff have foregone the journalistic tendencies found in GQ and Esquire in favor of dick jokes and frozen food ratings — and with tremendous success.
Maxim’s monthly circulation is 2.2 million copies, FHM’s is 821,834 and Stuff’s is 812,079. Meanwhile, the more established and arguably classier GQ and Esquire level out at about 856,000 and 676,000 copies per month, respectively.
“[Publisher Felix] Dennis clearly has tapped a nerve,” said William Glavin, chairperson of the magazine department and professor of communications at Syracuse University. “He found a niche to be filled, and an enormous one at that.”
This niche, which celebrated all the beer, guts and glory of being a guy, was the foundation of the British concept of a lad magazine. The first of its kind, Loaded, was launched in London in 1994; Maxim followed soon after. Reading material was short, smooth and witty, littered with the occasional profanity and sandwiched between miles of cleavage.
It was crass and crude – just like its audience – and it worked.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic lurked the potential to tap into an even bigger market. Sensing the start of a new trend, Dennis, of Dennis Publishing, Inc., decided to create an American version of Maxim.
“The conventional wisdom was that men wouldn't read a general interest magazine,” said Maxim Editor in Chief Keith Blanchard. But the style and presentation of the magazine – sexy women, high-tech toys, sports, alcohol – wrapped in one bitingly sarcastic publication, proved to be a winning formula.
Lad magazines cater to a markedly different readership from GQ and Esquire. Scantily clad starlets strike pin-up poses. Words like “sex” and “booze” grace most every page. Skimming the contents reveals a preoccupation with all things lingerie. Many of the brief pieces are injected with unabashedly macho humor and even the few serious articles have comedic undertones. However, therein lies the appeal for many of the male, and female, readers.
“The more they push the envelope, the more interesting it is,” said David Masteller, a senior environmental policy studies and management major who has subscribed to Maxim for three years. Masteller likes Maxim for more than the eye candy though, adding how the content is explicit and edgy.
Mike Buffalino, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been enjoying Maxim’s and Stuff’s wisecracks and sexual advice for the last two years. He and his friends cut articles out and paste them on their dorm room doors. His favorite part of the magazine? The ladies, of course.
While it seems obvious the women featured in the pictorial spreads aren’t being celebrated for their brains, the lad magazines attempt to laud women in their own way.
“There's been zero feminist protest of Maxim,” Blanchard said. “Animal rights activists yes, pissed off chiropractors, yes, but the women of Earth have really embraced us.”
So much so, in fact, that they created a column entitled “Letters from Ladies,” which showcases mail from female readers.
Bags of fan mail aside, not all women find the pictures – or the content – amusing.
“They symbolically put men back in the position of power,” said Leslie Grinner, a teaching assistant in the women’s studies department at SU. Males read these publications to reclaim their masculinity in response to women recognizing oppression and resisting patriarchy, Grinner asserted.
Although written tongue-in-cheek, some readers take the content seriously, and that’s what bothers Grinner most. Lad magazines – Maxim, in particular - make jokes about topics that are not at all funny, she continued, citing that Maxim’s recent “How to Have an Orgy” article suggests that readers find an unattractive woman to have sex with so they don’t have to resort to rape.
The fact that women read and support them doesn’t make the content acceptable, Grinner said, adding that the inclusion of women doesn’t resolve the matter of what she feels is blatant misogyny.
Some women who read lad magazines say they do so because the content provides an alternative to the usual droll of women’s magazines: weight loss tips and a million ways to use gray eye shadow.
“My only complaint is that they don’t tell you where those bikinis are from,” said Annie Hoversten, a sophomore fashion design major, with a smile on her face.
Amy White, a sophomore public relations major, likes lad magazines because they have articles with a practical application to everyday life, although she admits some of the pictures are “over the top.”
Nyla Saleh, a sophomore public relations major, is not offended by the content of lad magazines because she understands women aren’t the primary audience being targeted. “Whatever women find offensive is different from men’s perception of offensive,” Saleh said.
“I think the reason girls aren’t offended is because [they] know it’s for fun,” said Briana Newton, a sophomore television, radio and film major who occasionally reads lad magazines.
“Some of the ways they talk about girls are really sweet and affectionate,” she said, adding that she isn’t bothered by the fact that her boyfriend looks at the photographed women in front of her, either.
“I’ll admit that the girls look really good and I get jealous, but my boyfriend’s stuck with me so I’m not worried about them,” she laughed.
By contrast, GQ and Esquire consider themselves “men’s” magazines. Humor is far subtler and articles are more refined. Topics are written about seriously and intellectually, although some shorter pieces have a vein of sophisticated wit.
Lad magazines arguably give men the chance to loosen their ties, untuck their shirts and kick off those damned dress shoes they’ve been clomping around in all day. The magazines invite them to scratch their guts and guzzle a few beers while learning how to win a hockey fight (Maxim March 2002) or reading about the 20 greatest album covers of all time (Stuff March 2002).
Loathe ‘em or love ‘em, lad magazines have carved a niche for themselves in one of the most notoriously difficult markets ever: young men. And with an accomplishment like that under the belt, the beer gut isn’t going anywhere.
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