Man Versus the Mag

Heat

I started with Heat because I was bemused by the term ‘Yum-Mum-Tum’ on the front cover. Its flickable pages and colour scheme could distract even the most doomed hospital patients in the waiting room, were my other peripheral noticings.

I noticed, on opening the thing, that although Heat is totally vacuous, it’s also flashy and extremely well put together. Although I’m not intrigued at all (no, no way) by the silly lives of the silly, I wasn’t bored. Although my female friends thought I’d be put off by the trashiness of the magazine, I found this wasn’t the case. It seemed to strike a balance between sensational, attention-grabbingheadlines and as much of a topical range as this narrow field offers, and I was vaguely impressed.

Once again though, Heat conforms to the skewed morality that these stupid magazines harbour. Their leader proclaims: “Average-sized figures are back” – I thought the point is they were always there? “Heat is putting it out there, we never liked the size zero trend”. Thanks, Heat!

Look

Style is probably the most alien magazine section to a male reader. Trashy sex-tips, drunken stories and (even) celebrities are within my grasp of comprehension but an ENTIRE magazine dedicated to women’s ‘style’, I don’t really get.

Maybe that’s just because Look is interminably boring, and this concludes my whole experience of women’s style.

They tell us that their new ‘colour crush’ is ‘coral’. Oooh, ‘coral’. Credit goes to Look for being the least brash and morally offensive magazine I looked at. Though the features were so bland I almost lost faith in woman-kind.

new!

According to the omniscient gods that is the editorial team of ‘new!’, which at 45 pence is by far the cheapest of the magazines, it reads more like a social study than a women’s magazine. I’m on page 39, Amy from The Only Way Is Essex is peering at me through the page. She’s wearing a gold spandex swimsuit which definitely *ahem*, reveals what her best features are. And the caption says, “I don’t want to get my boobs out – I want to go a bit more classy with it”.

You’re probably thinking, “enough said, he hates the thing”, or “we all know its trash and he hasn’t really got it.” But actually, ‘new!’ struck me as quite harmless and not under any false pretensions which is refreshing.
There’s a noticeably higher level of male representation in this magazine which, although it’s often in the name of shameless middle-aged drooling, does mean that that silly differences between the sexes that the other magazines try to subversively accentuate are absent here.

Cosmopolitan

Cosmo Cosmo Cosmo. The infamous Cosmo – I am aware of this one. Synonymous with such teenage issues as crushingly low self-esteem, regurgitated and mostly crap sex advice (seriously girls, don’t listen!), and the most skewed implementation of ‘female liberation’ the print-world has ever seen. Cosmo.

A glance at the front page and I thought they’d got the scoop of the century – Kate Middleton’s a transsexual?! No, you were misled! It’s a feature on a transsexual who happens to share the name of the future Queen.

The Cosmo world is one of anticipation and disappointment with the premise of answering all your distinctly female insecurities. I’m sorry Cosmo, a male eye would never fall for this… Would it? In fact the similarities between Cosmo and the frowned upon FHMs and Nuts of this world are greater than the differences.

I’m sorry to say that Cosmo is the only magazine I picked up which I had strong opinions of either way. It’s the most popular and the most damaging; they’ve clearly recognised their market and business is a-boomin’.

Glamour

I don’t know what enemies or admirers I’m gaining by making this judgement but I’d say Glamour was by far the best magazine I looked at.

I do realise that, by revealing this, I’m giving you the insight that I’m middle-class, from the south of England (London to be exact), and privately educated. I noticed this snobbery in Glamour, but being a part of their target demographic, albeit a heterosexual male version of it, the snobbery is not
directed at me.

The topics aren’t different from the other magazines I’ve reviewed but the presentation is smarter and the content has more substance. I was genuinely interested by a feature on the difficulties of dressing for daytime television – ‘style can be interesting?’ asks a dull-eyed male macho man. I even found Glamour funny at times, without having to presume that the writers were being ironic.

It’s the right size and it’s £2, which seems a fair price – although, , once again, way too many adverts.