Men's Health Not (Totally) Gay

TOPICS: Mainstream media news. UK Guardian newspaper. Guardian Unlimited. Mark Simpson. Ian Johnson. Out Now. Men's Health. Gay imagery. Bob Mizer. Physique lifestyle. Metrosexual. Mens magazines. Gay men setting trends in areas of media - lifestyle and looking good media products. Advertising. Closet, closets, closeted men. Guardian Unlimited comment piece by Mark Simpson on Men's Health coming out of the closet about its strong gay market appeal.

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This is funny.

The gaying of heterosexual culture has been happening for quite a while now. The trends that straight guys today take to be their own were often brought into the market by the discerning gay male community.

That applies to fashion and looking good. It even applies to muscle and lifestyle mags for men. Titles such as Men's Health have been extolling men to exercise, moisturize, and luxuriate by spending up on their fashion and grooming advertising clients' products.

This is perhaps a trend of ten years standing or so in the straight world but gay men have racked up around 50 years or more of appreciating a better looking body.

Pioneers in so called male 'physique' modeling such as photographer Bob Mizer have been feeding gay men's appetite for good looking male torsos for a half century.

Today, the Men's Health magazine pages are a somewhat incongruous melange of repeated images of near-naked male homo-erotic bodies mingled amongst insistently heterosexual text.

In line with the old adage "Methinks (s)he doth protesteth too much" it is often speculated that many of the men that buy and read Men's Health are either bisexual, gay or 'questioning' - that elusive letter Q in the LGBTQ communities.

Today's Guardian Unlimited in the UK has a most brilliant piece of writing about just this topic. You can read an extract below, but if you like this, click on this link to read the whole Guardian Unlimited piece by Mark Simpson.

He and I were both interviewed about gay lifestyle issues for an Australian radio program in 2004, you may have heard of the term 'metrosexual' he coined back in the 90s. This article shows Mark has lost none of his ability to get to the meat of the matter.

Enjoy this - a quite entertaining read to start your weekend.

When the issue comes out - by Mark Simpson

Men's Health magazine seems laughably horrified at the idea of owning up to its gay readership and gay content.

Isn't it about time Men's Health, the world's biggest-selling "men's lifestyle" magazine, came out to itself?

I couldn't get to sleep the other night and so resorted to flicking through a recent UK issue: I find the pictures of semi-naked men's perfect, sweating muscles and the droning narcissistic hypochondria of the copy in this notorious metromag strangely soothing.

Then I happened across a five-page cringemakingly earnest article about "heteropolitans" (complete with a deathly serious "Am I heteropolitan?" questionnaire), which MH wants us to believe have replaced metrosexuals.

Apparently metrosexuals were too gay and too vain. Heteropolitans on the other hand are just perfect: they're really, really hetero, really attractive, really buffed, really rich, really stylish and really successful. What's more they also find the time to be really great husbands and dads, and are not in the least bit gay, vain, or even single. Did I mention that they're not gay already? And guess what? Men's Health readers are all goody-two-shoes "heteropolitans"!

Who do they think they're kidding with this guff? Their mother?

MH, with its front page pin-ups of studly six-packed shirtless men and pages and pages obsessive-compulsive advice on how to get the perfect pecs/skin/low-fat soufflé has long been one of the most nakedly metro of the men's metromags.

You might be forgiven for thinking that the only questionnaire MH needs to run is: "Am I gay? Or just bisexual?"

I haven't been exactly what you'd call a devoted reader over the years (the UK edition of MH was launched in 1995); I tend to dip in when I'm feeling in need of masochistic motivation at the gym or just some eye-candy, but I don't recall MH always being so comically keen to insist on its Totally Het credentials.

Every month gets more surreal in the flawlessly worked-out world of MH.

After taking rather a lot of paid advice from MH over the years, I have some advice for them I'll offer gratis. The editorial staff at MH should really give some thought to all those nasty stress hormones released into the bloodstream by being so nancy about mansex and so coy about something as natural and irrepressible as good old male vanity.

Especially when your business is built on it.

To really understand what's gay and what's not, rely on Out Now.
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