Are contemporary mens magazines a progressive force in society?
By Joseph Sharples For years the term ‘men’s magazine’ referred to one of two things: pornography or sport. But in recent years a new breed of men’s magazine has entered the public arena ‘en masse’. The new breed is thick, crisp, glossy, low in content, and very, very general. These new men’s lifestyle magazines have caught the interest of the market place — an interest for the most part not found five or ten years ago. Readers today appear to be very much more focused on the self, and the magazines have found an editorial format that is having a profound effect on the marketplace. Loaded, FHM, Men’s Journal, Maxim, Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Stuff, GQ, and the long established Esquire (which began in 1933) are just some of the publications that can be found filling the shelves of newsagents around the country. Perhaps the popularity of such magazines, with both audiences and advertisers alike, lies in their generality. This allows for an enormous variety of images to exist within t
