Excerpted from
Used to be that men didn’t need magazines. We got all our information from newspapers and our drunken, misinformed friends. The rest we either didn’t really need to know or gleaned from canny observation and imagination. This, of course, was back in the good old days when all a man had to do was live past the age of thirty to be considered a success of sorts. This was before we came into this sad modern age, where men are asked to dress well, appreciate literature, understand computer code, and not only know how to knock up some chick but how to make her enjoy it as well. Welcome, friends, to the Age of the Confused Male.
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We suffering males of the human species are forced to look toward new horizons for our guidance, for our virtual tribe. And our weary eyes alight on the magazine rack, once the domain of chicks seeking wedding ideas and pathetic rotund fanboys seeking the definitive episode guide to Star Trek, once avoided by men except when purchasing pornography or Sports Illustrated. Now, the magazine rack is our friend, and one disturbing in its implications and attitudes.
So next time you see some wet-n-naked starlet-of-the-moment who has to get her parents to co-sign the photo release on the cover of some magazine with a bunch of innuendo-laced headlines around her, don’t roll your eyes about the simplicity of men and their hormone-soaked brains. Rather, consider the destruction and horror of a Thunderdome-world where men didn’t have the comfort of these magazines to make them believe they’re not wimps.
