Although magazines created by men appeared in America
as early as the 1740s, magazines for men, designed specifically to speak to definable male gender interests, did not
fully emerge until the late- nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Focusing originally on participatory sports but
soon evolving to cover such lifestyle subjects as fashion,
grooming, leisure pursuits, spectator sports, and sex, these
magazines have consistently played a significant role in
defining both the sociocultural role of males and the nature
of masculinity in American society.
It can be argued, however, that the genre has an earlier,
albeit indirect, history. A number of early eighteenth-century periodicals were in some sense aimed at an elite segment of the new nation’s male population, cultivated men of
high intelligence and substantial means. Most notable were
Benjamin Franklin’s General Magazine (1741), Andrew
Bradford’s The American Magazine (1743), and Isaiah
Thomas’s The Royal American (1774), which proclaimed
itself to be “the first distinctive American magazine.” These
publications covered the pressing issues of the day: government, finance, technology, and commerce.
By the early 1800s, specialized publications began to
focus on vocations open largely to men; in effect, the first
trade magazines. Appealing to professions with mostly
male members such as lawyers, physicians, musicians, scientists, farmers, and academics, periodicals with such titles
as American Law Journal (1808), American Farmer (1817),
and American Journal of Science (1818) developed small
but devoted followings. About the same time, comic magazines proved popular with many men. The most famous was
Salmagundi, edited by Washington Irving, of The Legend
of Sleepy Hollow fame.
By the mid-nineteenth century, American magazines
clearly had begun to define themselves explicitly by gender. Magazines for male audiences became counterparts to
such successful specialized women’s magazines as Godey’s
Lady’s Book and Peterson’s Ladies’ National Magazine.
For example, Graham’s Magazine featured landscapes and
battlefield scenes, while the Western Review offered articles
on botany and Indian fighting.
Not until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did what might be generally recognizable today
as men’s magazines emerge. Here, by way of providing a
useful definition, both quantitative and qualitative criteria
apply. For example, most students of the magazine form
agree that for a periodical to have a gender-specific readership more than 60 percent of its audience must be of one
gender. In the qualitative realm, the central subject of the
publication must be one that, at any given sociocultural historical moment, most people would agree is customarily of
specific interest to one gender.
Using these criteria, the first two categories of genuine
men’s magazines were outdoor periodicals (often called
“sporting journals”) and publications promoting a certain,
often urbane, masculine lifestyle. The former genre—
devoted to hunting, fishing, horse racing, bicycling, and
other out-of-doors activities—included titles which wielded
substantial political influence. Forest and Stream (1873) was
a major factor in the establishment of the Audubon Society,
while Appalachia (1876) was instrumental in the passage
of the Act of Congress creating the national forests. By the
turn of the century, more than fifty such magazines were being published, and with each new technological development, periodicals appeared to serve the new, largely male
interest. The invention of the internal combustion engine
in the early twentieth century, for example, soon such fostered titles as Motor and Motor Boating. The successors
to the sporting journals of the late nineteenth century still
flourish today. Magazines such as Sports Afi eld, Field and
Stream, and Outdoor Life cover many of the same topics,
while a wealth of publications, similarly targeted at male
readers, concentrate on such leisure-active pursuits as boating (e.g., Yachting, Sail, Boating), automobiles (Car and
Driver, Road & Track, Hot Rod), and private aviation (Flying, Pilot, Soaring).
Most observers agree that the founding of Esquire in
1933 marks a point of origin for men’s lifestyle magazines.
Founded by Arnold Gingrich, within its pages were men’s
fashion spreads and scantily clad pinups, as well as both
fiction and nonfiction by such contemporary literary lights
as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William
Faulkner. By the mid-1950s, a number of other magazines
were employing a similar editorial formula. One of the
more successful of the era was Argosy; which claimed to
be “The Complete Men’s Magazine,” and to have a circulation of more than one million. It featured the work of such
authors as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Horatio Alger, Louis
L’Amour, and Dashiell Hammett. Many of today’s most
popular men’s interest magazines came into existence in the
1950s and 1960s. Sports Illustrated (1954) benefited from
the fact that television soon turned spectator sports into a
national obsession. Playboy (1953), and its later competitor
Penthouse (1969) tapped into a new appetite for guilt-free
ribaldry and idealized female nudity. In a more serious vein,
the Advocate (1967) spoke to political, social, and cultural
issues that concerned gay men.
The 1960s and early 1970s saw a major transformation
of the American consumer magazine publishing industry
what with the decline of many large mass-market, generalinterest publications such as the original Life, Look and the
Saturday Evening Post and the emergence of a wide variety
of smaller “special-interest” magazines focused on specific
leisure and recreational subjects and aimed at specialized
audiences. Competition from television and apparent mismanagement played a role in the demise of many massmarket magazines, while new publishing technology and a
major shift in national advertising toward segmented marketing favored the development of smaller, more specialized magazines. Magazine publishing became an exercise
in “niche marketing”—and one of the most promising and
profitable niches men and their interests.
Hundreds of magazines fall under the “men’s interest”
category. With topics ranging from fitness to fashion, cigars
to sex, as well as all manner of material pursuits, the market
brims with options. To give some idea of the diversity of
subject matter, one need only to look at a sample of some
top men’s magazines. Sex, fashion, music, cars, and shopping defined the most financially successful cluster of men’s
magazines during most of the 1990s. The field at the time
was led by four publications: GQ, Arena, Esquire, and FHM.
At the upper end of the market, GQ and Esquire magazines
were most popular among slightly older readers. FHM and
Arena appealed to younger fashion-conscious men with an
interest in popular music.
Esquire and GQ offer refinement and variety for professional men looking for a broader scope of information. Topics such as upscale fashion, business, health, fitness, sports,
fiction, entertainment, family life, and tips on improving
one’s sex life are cast in a way to appeal to a somewhat more
sophisticated audience—or, as is often the case in magazine
publishing—a group of readers who wish they were so.
Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, and Men’s Journal are
designed to help men obtain a well-rounded, healthy lifestyle in body, mind, and spirit. They also discuss exercise
and diet techniques, and provide columns to aid emotional
and mental well being. In addition, leisure activities and
sports are popular topics.
Details, one of the nation’s leading magazines for men
interested in the latest styles and trends, is diffuse in focus,
covering fashion, business, technology, food, entertainment,
travel, politics, celebrities, women, careers, and grooming.
Also growing in popularity is Black Men, a lifestyle magazine for African Americans. With an editorial mix of sex
and relationship articles, sports, business, personal finance,
grooming, and community news, it also includes pictures of
beautiful women.
Cargo, Stuff, and Blender all celebrate consumptive
materialism and offer articles targeted at a very specific
readership. Younger and perhaps less accomplished professionally than their elder brethren, The audience of these
publications is likely to be younger and less accomplished
professionally than their elder brethren, and more likely
to be interested in electronic gadgets, hip hop, celebrity,
music, and entertainment.
Similar to the category above but targeted at slightly
older readers, Playboy, Penthouse, and FHM appeal slyly
to “what every man wants.” Articles featuring large photographs and little text—known in the trade as “pictorials”—
prominently display numerous women models in varying
states of undress ranging from scantily clad to nude. There
are also features on sports, fashion, and exotic automobiles,
and all devote substantial space to bawdy jokes and humor.
Such salaciousness is not necessarily what every man
wants, and there is also a market for men interested in religion and/or marriage. New Man, a Christian magazine,
introduces another view of masculinity and Christianity. Its
stated goal is to help Christian men apply God’s truth to five
major areas of life: spiritual, intellectual, physical, social,
and emotional. Correspondingly, Marriage Partnership is
a magazine to help men sustain strong marriages and partnerships by offering advice on problem solving, cooperative
decision making, and sharing activities.
One important constant in the men’s interest category
over the years has been change. And one of the most important new men’s magazines—indeed, it created a whole new
category of publication colloquially know as the “laddie
magazines”—is Maxim. Founded in 1997, this monthly
magazine targets post-pubescent young men and was originally established in London and then brought to the United
States. Its mildly transgressive blend of soft-core titillation
and sophomoric humor have propelled its circulation well
past the two million, and as further evidence of its success
with male readers, its newsstand sales alone far surpass that
of GQ, Esquire, and Men’s Journal combined. Maxim’s
editorial formula is hardly subtle. Atop each cover a line
proudly proclaims the six topics on which the publication
focuses: sex, sports, beer, gadgets, clothes, and fitness.
While this list is not notably original in the broader context
of both historical and contemporary men’s periodicals, what
sets Maxim apart—and no doubt is key in its meteoric success—is the playfully juvenile and assertively unapologetic
tone with which the magazine approaches these topics. The
editors claim that the resulting attitude is that of a “smart,
funny guy in a bar,” but it could perhaps be argued that a
better description might simply be “boys behaving badly.”
Evidence suggests that the lessons of Maxim’s success
have not been lost on other men’s magazines. A number of
them, including such venerable stalwarts as Playboy and
Esquire, have taken steps to lighten their editorial mix,
intentionally seeking to appeal to the Maxim (read: younger)
reader. The result has been a move toward shorter articles,
unsophisticated humor, and a coarser editorial tenor. Publishers of men’s periodicals hope that by repositioning their
publications along the line of Maxim, they too will reap
similar financial rewards.
Such is the state of the American men’s magazine at the
start of the new century. It is a strikingly diverse category
of publications, with a magazine for almost every male
interest. As with many contemporary American media,
entertainment values tend to dominate over journalistic
ones. But then this is hardly a new phenomenon. Most
males, young or not so young, have read men’s magazines
as a diversion, as a respite from daily cares, or perhaps as an
escape into fantasy. In the end, it is the readers who select
the magazines they want, and for men, it is clear that the
choices are abundant.
Further Reading
Abrahamson, David. Magazine-Made America: The Cultural
Transformation of the Postwar Periodical. Cresskill, NJ:
Hampton Press, Inc., 1996.
Abrahamson, David; Bowman, Rebecca Lynn; Greer, Mark Richard; and Yeado, William Brian. “A Quantitative Analysis of
U.S. Consumer Magazines: A Ten-Year Longitudinal Study.”
Journal of Magazine and New Media Research, 5:1 (Spring
2003).
Beale, Claire. “Men’s Titles Set to Come of Age.” Marketing, February 1994: 12(1).
Fahey, Maryjane. “The Magazine for Magazine Management.”
Folio, March 2004.
Handy, Bruce. “Bosom Buddies: Today’s men’s magazines all
share a common interest. Can you tell?” Time, February
1999: 76(1).
Loeb, Marshall. “Sex, Sports, Beer, Gadgets, Clothes: The Magic
and Menace of Maxim.” Columbia Journalism Review May
2000: 68.
Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazines. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968.
Murphy, David. “Sporting Chances.” Marketing June 1998:
29(2).
Tebbel, John. The American Magazine: A Compact History. New
York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1969.
David Abrahamsom
Kim Weisensee