Bosom Buddies

Breasts have never really gone away, as any two-month-old or longtime viewer of certain premium cable channels will tell you. And yet a heightened fascination with things bosomy seems to have infected the world of men's magazines--the general-interest sort, I mean. This is largely due to Maxim, the British import, which, in its year-and-a-half of American existence, has shaken the world of cigar love and five steps to great abs.

The cover of any successful magazine is a shrewd advertisement for what lies inside. Maxim's each month features one buxom starlet or another leaning over or hunching her shoulders or toying with her bikini top. Inside, between pseudo service articles on, say, how to sneak into the Super Bowl or date women in prison, are pictures of more chesty starlets, along with the occasional female athlete who could pass for one. It should be noted that most of these images are far less risque than a Varga girl.

And yet, during Maxim's short life, its editorial vision has boosted its circulation over 500%. The magazine is now guaranteeing advertisers a circulation of some 950,000 copies, which means it has leapfrogged past Details, its most direct competitor for twentysomething guys (circ. 500,000), as well as titles aimed at older fellows, like GQ (circ. 700,000) and, of course, poor old Esquire (circ. 650,000), which was probably the greatest magazine of the 1960s but has since become to men's magazines what Turkey is to NATO.

Wasn't it only two years ago that men's magazines were loading up on earnest service pieces to respond to the success of the Cosmopolitan for guys, Men's Health (which currently boasts a circulation of 1.45 million)? Yes, but now all the fellows are slapping cleavage on their covers--in homage, it would appear, to Maxim. Whereas Details used to feature the stubbly likes of Stephen Dorff, the current number is graced by Elizabeth Hurley, touched up in such an unsubtle way that her breasts fairly leap off the page; it's as if they were eyeballs in a Tex Avery cartoon, ogling themselves. The accompanying profile opens with Hurley's complaining about having her chest photographically enlarged on the cover of Cosmo, which only goes to highlight the curious synchronicity between men's and women's magazines (but that's another discussion). Esquire has just come off a recent run of inexplicable covers that included cadaverish portraits of Fred Rogers and Bill Murray; on its February issue it has Pamela Anderson bending so far forward that she's in danger of assaulting the cameraman. The magazine tries to justify this pose with a three-part package billed as BREASTS! THE TRIUMPH OF CLEAVAGE CULTURE. Understand, then, that Anderson's breasts are being used not to goose magazine sales but to provide ironic commentary on...what? Anderson's breasts? This is a sad and pathetic dodge, like fathers in after-school specials who can demonstrate their love only by being remote and too stern.

Maxim, to its credit, will have none of that, or only a little. It is ironic about its dumbness in the manner of a show like South Park, which is to say that the irony is often barely discernible, white noise for a generation that likes to laugh unapologetically at poo and look at pictures of breasts without feeling that Patricia Ireland is peeking over anyone's shoulders. In its British form, like competitor FHM, Maxim is what is known as a "laddie" magazine, the periodical of choice for soccer hooligans. Its real secret is that virtually all the articles are terribly short. It's a magazine for people who don't like to read--for men, in other words.

The big news last week was that Details editor Michael Caruso was fired even though Maxim-ization had helped the magazine to recoup several years' worth of circulation losses. The new hire is none other than Maxim's editor, Mark Golin, who came to the magazine just a year ago from Cosmo. (Conspiracy?) Details, he says, won't "become Maxim," though it will "certainly have women and beer in it." He is tired of the criticism that Maxim has dumbed the category down. "Is civilization really coming to an end? Come on, you can get pictures of women and donkeys on the Internet." Well, yes. And seen on a newsstand crowded with stuff like Barely Legal, Maxim's PG-13 naughtiness comes off as charming, even sweet. But don't tell the magazine's readership of wannabe bad boys. The word might be deflating.