Men's Magazines

Magazines are cultural artifacts that reveal something about society. They tell us something about popular public ideological discourse concerning race, class, gender, and sexuality. Traditionally, men's magazines focused on health or pornography (e.g., Men's Health and Playboy). Today, a variety of specialty magazines that target the assumed interests of men focus on sports, cars, cigars, and so forth. However, the “new man's lifestyle” magazine has become a recent phenomenon within popular culture, and many rank as some of the highest-selling magazines in the United States. These publications continue to cover issues related to men's health, sex, sports, and cars but also provide advice to men on clothing, beauty products, video games, food, liquor, and more. Men no longer need to purchase multiple magazines in order to indulge in different areas of interest. Rather, men's lifestyle magazines, including GQ, Maxim, and Esquire, cover a number of topics within one magazine.

It is important to note that such marketing to men represents a turn in the consumer/producer dichotomy that was once largely divided along the lines of gender. That is, women have traditionally been thought of as consumers and men as producers. Therefore, the majority of product marketing was once designed to tempt women into consuming the advertised commodity. Men's lifestyle magazines reveal that today, men also are becoming targeted as consumers. Within the pages of these magazines, men are sold cologne, clothing, shaving cream, hair gel, and more. Interestingly, the ways men are being sold these items increasingly rely on marketing techniques that have traditionally been used to persuade women to buy products. As Susan Alexander (2004) notes, the magazine photos within feature articles and advertisements act to first create bodily insecurity and then offer a product solution. Alexander refers to this as “branded masculinity.” This strategy has long had consequences on women's self-esteem and body image. Because this phenomenon has only recently included men, researchers are just beginning to explore the meaning of such marketing and how the magazines create meanings of masculinity.