Maxim Magazine Review

Bottom-Line: Maxim magazine amounts to little more than a shopping catalog with a few journalistically questionable articles, with a plethora of young women posing in soft-soft porn spreads thrown.  

Is it me, or has there been a literal explosion of men's magazines in the last five years, all catering to the same subset of men; namely 20 something's whose taste in literature clothes, toys, and women seem the weigh towards the extreme?  First there was Maxim (the subject of this review), then FHM, Gear, Stuff (from the publishers of Maxim), and the newest, Blender (also from the publishers of Maxim), which touts itself as "The Ultimate Music Magazine," as if Rolling Stone didn't have that label sown deep into the blood-red letting of its flowing script!

All of these magazines have one thing in common (well okay several), they all feature pictures of the latest "girl thing" on their glossy covers in some skimpy attire and offer the reader a soft, soft porn photo spread of her and others inside the cover, along with several meaningless (stupid, moronic, insulting, tasteless, vapid) articles, and a truck load of advertisements! 

I leafed through my first edition of Maxim magazine about a three years ago, at my ex-brother-in-laws apartment.  It was in and among the other garbage that carpeted his music studio floor, and it caught my eye because it had the sexy half clothed picture of someone or other on the cover, and being a "red-blooded American male," that I am, I could resist a peak.  What I found was less than impressive and after about ten minutes of hype and little substance I discarded the magazine.

One of the issues I still have floating around (September 2004)'s cover features the cutesy, sexy pose of Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who portrays Meadow Soprano on HBO's The Soprano's.  And somewhere buried within the cavernous (did I mention this magazine is thick), pages of the magazine lies her seven page (interrupted by ads of course), spread.  The pictorial itself is nothing much to look at; little chest flesh is shown, and no locks south of the navel is unmasked to show the true hair color of the damsel in distress you are supposed to fall in lust with.  So I wonder what the fuss is all about?  Perhaps it's the suggestive poses or the come-hither looks, or the slightly wet skin that together are supposed to induce young men to play Omar the Tent Maker, but for me the poses just fall flat.

What about the articles you make ask?  Don't, you'd be better off.  In between ads, and the standard sections of your typical magazine, are pictures of people doing gross and or stupid, off the wall things like pulling a bloody tissue out of one's nose (huh?). 

In the final analysis, I was right to toss the first edition of Maxim I ever read back onto the floor with the rest of the trash where I found it, and feel confident enough that I will be missing no great insights into the human condition when I toss this issue into the recycling pile.  The magazine amounts to little more than a shopping catalog with a few journalistically questionable articles, and a plethora of young women posing in soft-soft porn spreads thrown in an attempt to add interest, and legitimacy to a magazine the clearly fosters neither to non-Neanderthal thinking men like myself.