Maxim-um Shite

A few months ago I had some airline miles about to expire. They were on an airline that I never fly, and there weren't very many of them, so I took advantage of one of those "exchange miles for magazines" offers. One of the magazines I selected was Maxim - I used to like it years ago, although not so much that I'd spend actual money on it every month. But how bad could it be for free? I mean, I like naked women, scotch, cars, cool real-life stories and all the usual man-stuff you'd expect to find in Maxim so I signed up. Now I recognize that at age forty I'm outside the Maxim target demographic but I have to say that the magazine is now complete shit.

For a start, in the last edition there were seven separate features involving partially clad women, mostly of the "movie star / TV star" variety, pouting at the camera. What's the point of this? Any adult male with a job and a place to live can hook up to the internet and view completely naked women by the thousand every day, some of them doing things with bananas that you definitely won't see in Maxim. I don't understand who needs page after page of not-even-remotely-naked pictures. Some are accompanied by the kind of stilted interviews that are presumably scripted to portray the starlet in question as the kind of girl-next-door who would be only too willing to shag you, and who is just a normal, down to earth person really. Yeah right.

Much of the rest of the magazine is dedicated to selling you stuff, either through actual advertisments or through shameless product placement features. There was a small section on cars, but it included an award for "toughest hybrid" which is a complete oxymoron since the hybrid is a badge of pussy shame that no archetypal Maxim reader should be considering. To be fair to Maxim, there were two articles worth reading, but magazines are ideal toilet-reading material and those articles wouldn't cover a single "major visit". Even if it was turbo-charged by a Thai curry.

So since I'm clearly not the Maxim target audience, who is? Well, they obviously either have money (so they can contemplate buying the >$100k Audi featured) or just like to whack off over pictures of stuff they can't afford. They are a man-about-town, confident enough to wear the fine fashion showcased at the end of the magazine, but insecure enough to need advice on how to deal with premature ejaculation. (By the way, the best comment I ever saw on the subject was "premature for whom, exactly?"). The Maxim reader is happy with pictures of semi-naked women, not showing any nipples or hairy undercarriage, possibly related to the premature ejaculation problem (full nudity presumably pushes them over the edge too quickly). They devote their entire disposable income to electronic gadgets but seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time in front of computer games, which may explain why they need advice on "How to decode what a woman's drink says about her". (Of course women are probably getting simultaneous advice from Cosmo or one of a thousand other women's magazines on what they should drink to make an impression, so I'm guessing you'd have more luck judging her real personality by the color of her underwear. Actually, that's not a bad idea...)

Now I'm not arguing that Maxim should shy away from drink, parties, cars, pretty girls, cool toys and stories about ninja killers in the misguided pursuit of a "higher" form of literature. Bring on the low-grade entertainment, laced with sardonic humor and flashes of accessible style. Publish something that would be a true playbook for the 25-35 age group. And put some bloody content in it, instead of filling a page with photos of five sneakers and calling that a feature, wankers. But for fuck's sake, if you can't hold off for a few minutes before blowing your wad when you're on the job, don't be looking to Maxim for sensible advice. I'd expect to read "shag uglier women - you won't come so quickly". That would be a magazine I'd buy. Or at least read at the dentist.


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison