Questioning Masculinity

This blog mirrors Paul’s film Shoulder to Shoulder, Men and Vulnerability which asks men about their experiences of being vulnerable and how this affects their emotional and relational health.

Archive of August, 2007

Reading Ourselves: looking at men’s magazines

Written by Paul Baines
August 5, 2007

I spent last Saturday visiting 3 book stores and a public library to look at men’s magazines with my friend Tuval. Just thinking about ‘men’s magazines’ brings up shameful images of super-models, super-men and all the plugged in/out gear one can pile into a military-style Hummer.

We browsed dozens of general magazines on fitness, news, music, hobbies, style, video games, and sports but we didn’t find what we wanted. There’s now also a popular ‘lad’ style of magazine with a long list of titles such as Maxim, FHM, and Loaded featuring almost naked woman and guides to style, sex, and success.

I’m browsing with Tuval because he’s thinking of starting a new magazine for young men that sells and shares a different story of being a guy.

Rather than solidifying stereotypes, is there a magazine to crack open manhood’s complexities and contradictions?

…being sexual without being a pervert or player

…having the strength to express weakness

…being playful without put-downs or power-trips

Tuval would like to see a new magazine for young men wrestling with manhood – serious play indeed.

A cluster of women’s magazines have escaped the ego industry and speak to the spectrum of women’s lives. Titles such as Bitch, Ms., and Shameless rattle and jump over gender fences that limit women’s choices and voices. The current issue of Shameless reframes negative and passive body-image and self-defense experiences and reports on inspiring women artists, artisans, and athletes.

Starting in 1990, Sassy magazine (also a non-conformist) had a spin-off title for teen boys called Dirt. It published seven issues before ending in 1994 and helps raise the question is there an audience for a young men’s magazine that challenges the central monument of masculinity?

Perhaps what Dirt crumbled from (and what a new magazine could learn from) is how to get past the guarded discourse of masculinity itself. Feminism has unlocked a new world for looking at gender, power, and identity and successfully mapped gender’s social location. Unfortunately (keeping my geography metaphor going) men don’t like to use maps or ask for directions (so I’m told).

So how does one organize a male readership still forming it’s literacy around masculinity?

Perhaps it’s not what you don’t know, but what you know you don’t like.

For me, high school male identity was not only shaped by my music, sports, and style, but by an opposition to what my friends and I considered mainstream, macho, meat-headedness. Sometimes difference and exclusion can bring people together.

Affirming that not all young men are the same, a critical response to ‘men’s magazines’ could be met with some cheer.

Listen:

Tuval speaking about our magazine ‘research’.

http://www.mediamindful.ca/media/tuval_interviews.html

To get involved in the development of this magazine email: mascmagazine@gmail.com

Write:

I’d love to know what guys think of men’s magazines (especially if you’re between 15 and 25).

Any ideas on a cool name for a new magazine? Vote for one of these or submit your own:

MASC

BOND

PLAYER

Read: