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Of course, it also appears to be true that the new men's magazines and TV programs are preying on a class of young men who may feel disenfranchised because they do not belong to the world of 26-year-old Internet millionaires with whom the news media are so endlessly enthralled. The median income for men 25 to 34 decreased from $27,656 a year in 1989 to $25,996 in 1997, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Moreover, according to the research firm MRI, the number of 18-to-34-year-old men earning $60,000 a year or more (the market-research industry's affluence standard) is growing at a slower rate than it is for adults on the whole.
Backlash author Susan Faludi, who explores the subject of male alienation in her upcoming book Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, puts it this way: "If you don't have a lot of money, you're not a player. That's what the culture has taught young men. It's hard to feel like a grownup man. Maybe there is comfort in believing that it's O.K. to be a boorish kid with a baseball cap turned backwards forever." And that it's O.K., throughout that long boyhood, to keep your room wallpapered with pinups from Baywatch.