GQ (1-year) [MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTION] [PRINT]

Since those days (and since radical shifts in the direction of my vocation), I have used GQ less and less. Then, about a year ago, I got one of those buy-magazines-and-win-millions offers (no, I didn't win), and one of the few magazines that held any interest to me in this particular list was GQ. So, I thought, a few dollars, and I'll get a magazine I like.

Well, not quite.

GQ is very different today than I remembered. For one thing, only one of the past many issues I've received has seemed something I would want arriving at my home (as I am now a priestly sort) -- apparently, in order to stand out in the men's magazine world, GQ feels it necessary to put an almost-naked woman on ever cover in some sultry pose. Now, fair enough, this is appealing to men, but an examination of issues ten years ago will show this was not the cover feature back then (usually it was a man on the cover, either a well-known person from sports or entertainment, or someone showing a fashion style). The April 2000 issue is more what I was used to -- it has on the cover Nomar Garciaparra, Alex Rodriguez, and Derek Jeter. Of course, the headline has to appeal to the prurient interest, reading that they play shortstop as well as play the field. Included on the cover are stories about 'Alaska's Wild, Wild Women', an anonymous story entitled 'My Mentor, My Rapist', and a story about a new 'trend' of men becoming voluntary castrati. EEK!

This is certainly not the magazine I remember. I don't remember being titillated by GQ of the 80s (sure, there were advertisements that are always destined to have some sexual content, subtle and not-so-subtle), but GQ today is trying hard to compete with the almost (or maybe not almost) soft-core magazines such as Maxim. But I have found that I find very little of interest to actually read in GQ, and I am not so interested in the fashions or the sexual content any longer, so, I have come to the decision that GQ is no longer a magazine for me. And there seems to have been an explosion of advertisements -- so many, in fact, that it is hard to find the actual content of the magazine apart from the advertisements. Considering the number of advertisements (which, I must confess, all seem the same to me, and I'm an old PR guy, who used to teach advertising!), GQ should be paying me to look at the magazine!

And, I'm sure, GQ doesn't expect it to be. While in many demographic respects I am exactly who they are targeting (a 30-something, white, educated male), it no longer fits my lifestyle, which has taken a different direction from 'popular' culture. GQ has a strong audience, but alas, it is no longer the magazine for me.

Pass me 'The Economist', will you?

Space which used to be devoted to interesting fashion, travel, "mixology" and dining has been diverted to titillating "skin" shots and silly lists of things which are uninteresting, useless and often offensive. What little fashion remains will be useless to those who inhabit even a semi-traditional world, though if your taste runs to 4 day beards, long uncombed hair and leather, you'll love it.

Also permeating the "new" magazine is a very heavy handed political agenda. The old GQ profiled politicians on occasion but with a focus on their personal side and without political "spin" to the story. Every issue of the new GQ trashes conservatives and Republicans from cover to cover. Examples---the current issue somehow finds a way to take a swipe at President Bush under the pretext of answering a reader question about loafers; a profile of singer Toby Keith is sneeringly derisive of his pro-U.S. songs; a recent review of several new British mystery writers found a way to spend much of its space trashing Margaret Thatcher, etc., etc.

So, the old GQ wasn't political and did a great job focusing on a broad range of fashion and other items of interest to guys with an emphasis on the traditional. It was interesting, entertaining and informative. The new GQ seems to me to have minimal use for anyone, even big city "hipsters" on whom the publishers have decided to focus. If you want liberal politics, or "skin" photos, you have far better magazine choices. There's precious little else left in GQ except for the scruffy guys in page after page of ads.