Magazines that Men Read
“What’s so manly about men’s magazines?” asked a female colleague, flipping through my copy of Man’s World (Ever since Gentleman shut shop, I seek my pleasures here). I was a bit perplexed. Had it been a Debonair, Fantasy or the like I would have had an appropriate answer. “Well they discuss men, their problems (girls), gizmos and stuff” I cooked up an answer. “But women’s magazines are also on the same lines, what is then so exclusively male about men’s magazines,” the argument continued…

Yesterday when I flipped through the first issue of Maxim’s India edition, I found an end to the argument. It’s definitely not ‘the best thing to happen to men since women’ but I won’t mind inflating my periodicals bill by Rs. 60 a month. The female focussed market so long failed to comprehend that the Indian male has needs beyond politics, business, sports and topless models. The other men mags (of the non-topless model variety) which my constrained memory recalls reading is the bimonthly GT (another extinct species?) from the Times of India stable.

With news floating around about Playboy going desi (sans the bunnies of course), this summer should be sizzling. Didn’t read much of Maxim, but a quick flip tells me that if not intellectually stimulating, it sure is visually appealing.

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