Have you ever noticed that European muscle magazines are more likely to sex up their magazine covers? With some, I can't tell if it's a fitness journal or a beefcake pictorial.
I guess it's because, for some reason, Italian muscle mags are more likely to have dark Mediterranean, Italian men. (I wonder why...)
When I was a post-pubescent girl, I didn't go for Tiger Beat, I went for the muscle man mags (at least when I wasn't accompanied by someone and I quickly checked to see that no one in the store was looking). This was in the mid-to-early nineties when the handsome Mike O'Hearn was required by law to be on every single magazine cover.
One of the great regrets of American bodybuilding mags is the gradual transformation of MUSCLEMAG into the magazine of choice for douchey, homophobic jocks whose pictorials center on unaesthetic, somewhat grotesque guys that remind me less of Adonis or Hercules, but the "Gammas" from Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD. I'm not so much offended by their "wink, wink" subtle endorsement of full time juicing, the insane hardcore "gruntgruntbulgeBIGGERharder" mentality, or the fact it's homophobia and misogyny (strange how the two go together!) became so ruthlessly overt it could actually be called an editorial position.
Rather, I'm offended by their cancellation of the Max Rep comic strip! Good luck getting anything like that today into the dead serious Musclemag. It was the funniest comic strip of all time to people that like jokes about soy powder.
In many ways, European muscle mags are something of a throwback to the days when the purpose of the muscle mag wasn't just to give exercise tips, but to sell a lifestyle with photogenic and handsome male bodybuilders with sensual and perfect bodies that were usually clutched adoringly by submissive women.
In fact, it's interesting to speculate how early physique magazines functioned as a kind of early, unannounced gay porn.
In fact, visit this website for a GREAT collection of vintage physique magazine covers.
2 comments:
I believe it may be related to Europe (especially Western Europe) generally being more open about sexual stuff than US.
That's certainly true, but I think the big difference here is that European mags target the same audience the American vintage physique mags used to go for: young men that need to be sold on the bodybuilding lifestyle by handsome, photogenic and glamorous guys.
This is no longer true, with American mags like MUSCLEMAG targeting a niche audience of hardcore types more interested in a guy that looks like Dexter Jackson than Sagi Kalev.
As for the Western Europeans, I lived for a year in Marseilles, France. Being petite and Latina, I was usually thought to be Arab, incidentally, and I can say the French were much more alright with nudity on TV at weird times, but the worst place in Europe for sleazy sex in everything has to be Prague. When I was there for a study-abroad program as an undergrad, the weather on network TV was done by a naked woman walking down the street and putting on something appropriate for the day (raincoat if it was going to rain, etc.)
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