The Maxim Menace: A SNOB Investigation

Part One in a Three-Part Series

I've been meaning to address the subject of Maxim Just For Men Haircolor for some time now. The fact is that the cosmetics industry has looked at men the way Texas oilmen look at the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, a woefully underutilized resource ripe for drilling. Just imagine that you make a product with insane margins, but so far have sold it to only half of the population. Why screw around selling Maybelline to China when you could potentially double your sales right here at home?

The problem is that the formula for selling cosmetics to men is as elusive as the 300 mile-per-gallon carburetor. Consider the fact that men's cologne, which men have been wearing for thousands of years, is marketed primarily to women, and overwhelmingly purchased by women. Men smell bad but could care less, so the industry markets the product to those who do, i.e. mothers, wives, and girlfriends. This is actually true about pretty much every product save for guns, Corvettes, and tittie bars. The only women's product which is marketed to men in any way whatsoever is lingerie. Had the keeper of the Grail really wanted to keep Indiana Jones away all he needed to do was put the damn cup behind a cosmetics counter at Macy's.

Not that anyone outside of the industry gave a rat's ass. Looking at nature, it's a prety good rule that in every advanced species, one sex wears the flashy feathers while the other makes do with a nice grey suit. Humans logically nominated women for the role because the female because God made Woman's body a work of art, and Man's body a work of necessity. We're both filled with neuroses and phobias about our bodies: women because the imperfections might stand out, men because we realize how silly we look with our clothes off. Indeed, most of the male celebrities who get the "Hot" label nowadays, like say Brad Pitt, Leo Dicaprio, or Joshua Hartnett would probably be able to pass for female in a dress and a wig. And this is precisely where the real problem begins.

Way back when, the best-selling magazine for men was Esquire, which in its glory days published important works of literature, recipes for cocktails, and directions on how to tie a double-windsor or a sure-fire dry fly for rainbow trout. These were of course the salad days for men: John Wayne on the silver screen, Eisenhower in the White House, three martinis for lunch, Frank on the radio, and your secretary for dessert. Listen ladies, if you had it like this, you wouldn't have wanted it to change either. Anyway, Esquire checked out with the Kennedys, and was replaced by the triumvirate of Playboy, Field & Stream, and Sports Illustrated. Men didn't buy magazines about the matter of being men, because the last thing a real man worried about was whether he was a real man. It was the girls who read noxious "Women's Magazines," whose main purpose was to torture women with fashion they could neither afford nor fit into and men with pop quizzes designed to make us look worse, as if we needed the help.

Men's magazines did persist for a while, but by the early nineties were either dead letters (Esquire, GQ) or gay (Details). Men, with racks full of guns, boats, cars, sports, and racks, could have cared less. But then came Maxim, and the rest was publishing history. Full of fart jokes, juggy girls, "How to kill an alligator" stories, all wrapped up in a shiny flashy package, here was a "Men's Magazine" that real men didn't feel like wusses buying. Indeed, the rest of the publishing world went after the Maxim model like the Japanese electronics industry went after television. The final seal of approval came when the feminists began their ritual lamentations about the objectification of women blah blah blah.

But beneath all the letters from prisoners, practical jokes, and pictures of starlets in their underwear, Maxim also contained deeply-disturbing articles about personal fitness and evening a monthly section on the latest fashions! From the get-go, these made me feel deeply uncomfortable. For what was this but a traditional women's magazine masquerading as something a self-respecting ironworker could be seen walking into the porta-potty with?

To be continued...

Hiatus Ended
Last post was ~4 months ago, summer's almost over, time to get back to it. Now that I have my pilot's license done, I have other things to start worrying about again, like this website...