I’ve Found My First Enemy in the Fashion World: Magazine Editors
When I started my fashion education, I subscribed to GQ, Men’s Vogue, and Details. I have a love-hate relationship with these magazines. On the one hand, they are invaluable for expanding my fashion horizons beyond that of a Southern preppy with an unhealthy addiction to L.L. Bean. On the other hand they seem to be actively devoted to lowering my I.Q. If you are trying to get out of Mensa but are having trouble, subscribe to all three of these magazines for a while to lower your score.
All the covers have men who are young, attractive, famous, and wealthy. GQ has James Franco, a 30-year-old actor. Men’s Vogue has Eli Manning, a 27-year-old athlete. Details has Shia LaBeouf, a 22-year-old actor. Catherine recently told me that fashion magazines used to have anonymous models on the covers because the emphasis was on the clothes, but now it’s just celebrities, our modern recreation of the pantheon of Greek gods.
These morons are supposed to be my role models? Are you serious?
Here I am at age 43 getting interested in men’s fashion because of some character development in the pursuit of wisdom, and when I go to the editors of fashion magazines to see what they might teach me, they tell me to sit at the feet of pretty boys. These aren’t men. Why are boys monopolizing the covers of men’s fashion magazines?
There’s nothing wrong with youth, physical beauty, fame, or wealth. There’s not even anything wrong with all four in one person. (Are you listening God? I’m ready to win the lottery now. Oh, shit, I forgot — I don’t believe in God, do I. Damn.) But there is something unhealthy about being interested in only one model of masculinity. There are so many different ways to be a man. But our culture idolizes the ideal of the alpha male.
Think about all the people you personally know who are all of the following: young, attractive, famous, and wealthy. It’s probably zero, because an unbelievably small number of people have all four. But of the three men’s fashion magazines, not only do all three put such people on their covers, they do so for every single issue. This is totally unbalanced and unhealthy. I have known so many wonderful men in my life, and some have been alpha males, but most have not been.
What I would like to see on the covers of men’s fashion magazines is some variety. Sure, put pretty boys on the cover every now and then, just not every damn issue like this is some kind of Soviet dictatorship. This country has three separate major men’s fashion magazines, and they are all controlled by the same cult.
Fuck you editors of men’s fashion magazines. I will not join your mindless, anti-intellectual cult of celebrity.
Hmmm. Maybe a complex is getting triggered here…. I may need some more fashion therapy.