Men's Magazines

As a lover of the written word and fabulous images, my love for slick magazines can be clearly understood. I have confessed to keeping piles of them and boarding on a hoarders obsession, but now I recently discovered a new side of my love - men's magazines. No, not those silly, the ones available without brown wrappers, the titles I am not supposed to be drawn to have pulled me in with an uncontrollable force.

Today was the perfect day for sitting in a chair on the deck, sunbeams in my face and my yellow Lab, Maddy at my feet with a magazine in my lap. Yes, I had a short stack including; Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Health and Men's Journal. I looked at Woody Harrelson on the cover of Men's Journal and wondered why he wasn't on the face of the women's magazines. Honestly, I've never understood why the supermarket magazines feature women for women and men for men except women on Maxim and men on Playgirl. This really doesn't make sense to me at all. Yes, I want to read about Sandra Bullock, but why wouldn't I want to know more about Woody as well? Maybe I really can't relate to Megan Fox even though I love learning about 50 new tricks for my left over chicken (that's a stretch, but you understand what I mean) and so I habitually buy the titles I am supposed to as a member of my demographic.

Here's where the real differences came in though, in a side by side comparison (and to explain my methodology, I read the men's magazine first then Cosmo), it felt like the writing in Men's Journal was perhaps a bit more sophisticated or maybe I just enjoyed the fresh tone of voice. I didn't worry that I don't resemble the model in the ads for a second. I wasn't assaulted by overtly sexy ads or numerous fragrance samples. I liked it. Well, maybe the comparison was too harsh to I moved on to Health magazine with Christina Applegate on the cover. The topics were quite a bit tamer of course and the writing style was obviously different but I still wanted to buy another men's magazine. Maybe the lesson is to stop organizing magazine titles by sexual orientation period.

Here's a sample of what I enjoyed today...http://www.mensjournal.com/in-the-april-issue-woody-harrelson