Good GQ and Bad GQ
Today I start my exploration of a dark forest full of dangers at every turn: the January 2010 issue of GQ. Wish me luck. If you want to protect your intelligence, be warned that reading GQ can be hazardous to your IQ. But if you know how to protect yourself from it — that is, if you have an IQ over 80 — you can emerge intact with valuable bits of treasure that are buried inside.
The cover provides a mild shock that momentarily tests my resolve to undertake my journey and forces me to remind myself why it is worth the risk to my mental faculties.
January 2010 cover of Frat Boy GQ
Is it worth dealing with page after page of Frat Boy GQ just to find those few pages out of Grown-up GQ? See, when you subscribe to GQ you actually get two magazines in one. It is as though two completely separate magazine staffs write under the single banner labeled “GQ.”
The staff of Grown-up GQ seems to be composed of mature, thoughtful, sophisticated gentlemen who are no less traditional than they are contemporary. They would feel at home with the gentlemen of any age because they dress and behave with high standards, and they go below the surface of things. They show me all kinds of details about style, nuances that I would miss on my own because I do not have much experience with men’s fashion.
By contrast, the staff of Frat Boy GQ seems to be composed of immature, stupid, shallow peasants who seem to actively work at keeping their intellectual and emotional development from going past that of adolescence and who are going to take Western civilization back to the Dark Ages unless we figure out some way to keep them down.
For Frat Boy GQ, women don’t even exist. You will never see them in its pages. Frat Boy GQ likes girls, and the younger and nekkider the better. These are not women who will challenge the frat boy to grow up, make him think, or encourage him to share his introspection or thoughtful analysis of the world around him. These girls are interested in only one thing: having sex with a frat boy. With covers like these, it’s kind of ironic that the G in GQ stands for Gentlemen’s. BQ would be more appropriate. You get two magazines in one: GQ and BQ.
The covers aren’t always so stupid, so it’s invariably a mild shock when I pick up a new issue of GQ and see the cover of BQ. But as much as I loathe BQ, I know that it is what I must endure to reach the nuggets of style gold in GQ. And they are there. I’ll show you in a future post.