Maxim’s recent sale to Darden Group inspired us to take a look at what’s hot in the lad mags. Bet your bottom dollar it’ll be a race to the bottom.
Is it possible Maxim’s Editor-in-Chief Dan Bova doesn’t realize that “The Voice” judge Christina Aguilera is a has-been? Or are all the skin mag’s readers in on the joke? The oversexed 32-year-old songstress tries her best to play up a sultriness that’s not what it once was. And her most recent album, Lotus, hasn’t set the world on fire, either. Yet, Maxim, which has featured Aguilera three times, wants readers to believe she’s “at her hottest ever.” No wonder Maxim’s circulation has been declining. Speaking of has-beens, the mag also includes a piece on the return of comedian and TV talk show host Arsenio Hall to late night television that merely dances around the likelihood that his renaissance will be a short-lived one.
You can read this month’s Details and not find a single article to grab you. The most recognizable name in the issue was comedian Aziz Ansari’s, and most people probably don’t even know him. He is funny, so it’s too bad he doesn’t show up until a Q&A on the last page. Pharrell Williams is on the cover, leading the feature on 34 visionaries “redefining the way we live.” Williams is a creative genius and he was part of the song of the summer, Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” but that’s hardly life-changing.
You too, GQ,The ultimate guys magazine has succumbed to the latest trend, dumbing down media with a BuzzFeed-style listicle. There it was in the middle of this month’s issue: The 20 worst sports franchises of all time. Sure, it’s not the first time GQ has employed a list to present little bites of fluff, but in the age of online virality the tactic seems too juvenile for GQ. That said, the classic GQ still delivers the best men’s read around, and this month has particularly good timing with a gravitas-earning portrait of Senator Ted Cruz.
Out has an excellent article about a proven HIV-prevention drug called Truvada that gay men don’t seem to be using. A key dilemma is that it could undermine the message that condoms are still a must for safe sex. Interesting, which is why we were surprised it was buried in the back and got only a vague tease on the cover, which is instead emblazoned with the face of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Likewise, there’s an important-seeming piece about gay men’s reluctance to draw a sharp distinction between being HIV-negative and merely “undetectable,” but it gets just two-thirds of a page. No knock against keeping it fun, but let’s bring the serious issues out of the closet, boys.
The New Yorker — which itself took heat in 2011 for its story on the raid on Osama bin Laden that reeked of being spoon-fed by the White House — has a story that contrasts the Guardian’s “tough” coverage of the NSA leaks with the work of, say, the New York Times. Editors at the Times fussed over whether their columnists should cover the NSA affair, and gave in to threats from the US government to hold back stories in the name of national security. “That to me is a really good reason why people like Edward Snowden don’t want to go to the New York Times,” says Guardian scribe Glenn Greenwald. Wonder what Greenwald thinks of the New Yorker’s coverage.
New York’s “business issue” has Grumpy Cat frowning on its cover, despite the fact he’s been declared one of the “boom brands of the post-crash economy.” The contents inside — which amount to a series of unpaid ads for companies like Tumblr, Airbnb, One Kings Lane and a few restaurant chains — are equally fluffy, and didn’t make us smile, either. The over-arching theme here is “new brands that lodge themselves into our psyches,” and purport to be about America. Maybe, but it’s a far surer bet that the psyches in question are this smartphone-, handbag- and restaurant-obsessed magazine that’s far more interested in consuming the topic of biz than reporting on it.
Time has a “special college report” that gives an outlook on the “Class of 2025.” Needless to say, the outlook isn’t too great, with 83 percent of US college graduates unable to say what the Emancipation Proclamation ordered. That, of course, isn’t shocking news for those of us who have been keeping track. What we found far more interesting was that this cover story spanned a grand two-and-a-half pages of text, while smack-dab between its beginning and end is an eight-page “special advertising section” paid for by the Carnegie Corporation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Sadly, the content of the ads is slightly more interesting.