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I was probably in high school the first time I bought a men’s magazine. My Junior and Senior year I spent a lot of time in airports and I remember perusing the newsstands, contemplating the many glossy titles for men. This was back around the year 2000 and the choices for magazines were many. This was the heyday of the so-called “lad mags”, hyper-sexualized titles like Maxim and FHM sat on the opposite end of the spectrum from the more traditional titles like GQ and Esquire.
Scantily clad women with their mouths half open who had apparently been greased up to squeeze through some sort of a tight space appeared on magazines appealing to the most carnal of tastes. These were a far cry from the covers featuring handsome, well-groomed men of athletic or cinematic renown. Those were the magazines that seemed to call my name. Wanting to feel the way those men looked, I purchased one.
I distinctly remember the early days of reading men’s magazines. Of feeling overwhelmed by all the topics I knew absolutely nothing about. As I turned each page I had the sense everything I was reading was knowledge inherent to a certain type of highly competent man and consuming these magazines was the path to masculine proficiency.
I gravitated towards the articles about pleasing women and romance since girls were something I spent the large majority of my time thinking about. Surely some of those articles would help me in my, very clueless and fumbling, endeavors.
I read the articles about cars because I thought I wanted to be the kind of guy who knew about cars. I read the articles about fine wines and liquors because clearly, that was the kind of thing a man needed to know about. But all of it went over my head. So many of these topics I had no baseline knowledge in. It felt like auditing a class in which I did not belong.
The class was called manhood.
Around the time I entered college my sister would bring home copies of men’s magazines she got for free at work. Slowly I became obsessed. I read these publications not so much as entertainment or education but as guides and how-tos. Biblical texts.
I was simultaneously excited and overwhelmed by the density of these magazines. I would first page through and tear out every ad and cologne sample to make it clear where the actual content was. Then, as I read each article I would tear it out to let myself know how much of the magazine was left.
Those torn out pages didn’t all end up in the trash. I was so keen to remember everything I had read that I started saving pages. A small pile in my desk grew until it required its own folder and eventually a binder.
Even though I was still living with my parents I would save the how-tos on things like building a bookshelf or a backyard fire pit, because I wanted to do those things in my own house… one day. I saved reviews of luxury watches I might one day be able to afford. I kept all the articles on dating.
I was especially fond of the long form interviews. Those deep dives where people who had clearly made it (athletes, actors, businessmen) would share their life advice. I drank deeply from these pieces, hoping to be informed, nourished, changed. I would underline. I would highlight. Most of all, I would save.
I saved so I could remember.
Those torn out pages filled one binder and then a second. I titled them:
Man 101
It was a hobby I told myself I could one day turn into a business. Teaching young men like myself all the skills they needed to be a man. Not just what a man had to be, but what he could be.
By the time I left college, Esquire, GQ, Details, and Cargo all showed up at my door monthly. I fantasized about getting a job at one of those or another. Once hired, I would immerse myself in the cosmopolitan world of what was surely a collection of renaissance men of great confidence and panache having intellectual discussions, laughing heartily and slapping each other on the back.
I clearly had no idea how magazines worked.
Until I finally got a job at the parent company of Men’s Journal. This became the 5th men’s magazine I was then reading. It was the affluent adventure man’s newsletter. I was very much not an affluent adventure man. The content was so beyond the scope of my own life it was nearly incomprehensible. Gear for activities I had never done, adventure trips of astronomical cost I would never do, the lifestyle of a man I would have loved to be and yet, had no roadmap to.
Slowly, as my time there passed, I began to realize the workings of a magazine were so very different than I imagined. They were businesses based heavily on circulation numbers. Decisions were based on design and packaging. There were contracts and product placements. Deadlines and word counts. The articles were written by authors from their homes in Montana or Arizona. The room where it came together was little more than an office with a series of expensive toys strewn about. It was more of a correspondence course than it was a Platonic Academy of neo-men.
Two years after I started, I left magazine publishing for good.
Subsequently, the magazines I had anticipated every month started to thin out. One of them folded. Another, I realized, depicted a lifestyle I had no interest in. A third struck me as too condescending, too snarky. Eventually, I was left with just one subscription.
And that was all I needed. This magazine was not a definition but an exploration. It talked about boyhood and old age. It talked about flaws and fallacies. It was honest and uncomfortable. It felt like a monthly companion to my journey through life. I believed it was propelling me to my own ideal.
I revered it. Too much so. Partially because of my love for its content but possibly because my love for the other magazines had been redirected. I loved the idea of the monthly men’s magazine so much it made me quite sad to imagine my life without it.
And then the editor of that magazine changed, along with the content, in dramatic fashion. And I felt a bit… lost. I have always sought answers elsewhere. From people older than myself, from books, and certainly from magazines.
Constantly anticipating is a precarious way to live one’s life. To always be waiting on the verge of an answer, an external solution. It builds a kind of constant hollowness into one’s being. I would be infinitely waiting on one more answer or piece of wisdom that would help me become myself.
Rarely do our solutions come in such an obvious external package.
For years, perhaps even a decade, I paged through magazines looking for the type of man I wanted to be, imagining how it would feel if I was interviewed, what advice I would have to offer.
Eventually, more recently than I’d like to admit, my desire to become the men I read about sort of crumbled. My own critical thought process evolved enough so I could read articles not as instructions but as ideas. I found myself disagreeing audibly, laughing to myself when I realized how impractical an article was, or how out of step somebody else’s worldview was with my own.
The man I wanted to become had abruptly split ways with the man I thought I wanted to be.
The part of me hoping for a blueprint is largely at odds with the rest of me that just wants to do things my own way. I am always happier when I am incorporating bits I’ve learned elsewhere as opposed to mimicking somebody else exactly.
For many years, the life I wanted seemed trapped behind a series of life milestones I hadn’t figured out how to access; a great job, a beautiful woman, and a large salary. There will never be a publication that will forever accurately portray the road ahead in a way that resonates with me. And while that was at first disappointing it has become freeing.
I no longer feel like just a reader, consuming content about others’ lives. I have become a writer, crafting the rubric of how my own unique life can be.
I have a habit of saying “I want to be the kind of man who…” It bothers my girlfriend because, as she puts it, “You say that a lot, but if you want to be the kind of man who does something, and you already do that thing, well, you are already that kind of man.”
It turns out, all along I’ve just wanted to be the kind of man who is himself.
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Amazing work Richard! I related so much to your journey. Being myself is is something I have always struggled with whilst being pummeled by messages of what a man should be. We are all individuals. Using a template is invalidating and as you put it so eloquently, creates a hole in the self. Furthermore, the old template is no longer the correct template, and a society wired for self destruction is what is left of its ancient convictions.
Richard, I enjoyed your article. Finding guides to being who we are is a life-long journey. I found great help and support in a men’s group. We’ve now been meeting for 38 years. My wife, Carlin, believes that a lot of the success of our 37 year marriage can be attributed to my 38 years learning what it means to be a good man in the company of other men. I’d like to hear more about your work.
Hey Jed – I completely agree. I’d love to hear more about YOUR work. I’m reaching out to you via email now. Looking forward to connecting.