Men's Magazines Research Articles

Models of Physician–Patient Relationships in Pharmaceutical Direct-to-Consumer Advertising and Consumer Interviews

The rise of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) has mirrored, if not facilitated, the shift toward more active health care consumers. We used content analysis to identify models of physician-patient interaction in DTCA from the 1997 to 2006 issues of a broad sample of women's, men's, and common readership magazines. We also conducted 36 in-depth interviews to examine the ways consumers receive and regard advertising messages, and to explore their preferences for clinical communication and decision making. We identified four models of physician-patient relationships that vary in their locus of control (physician, patient, or shared) and the form of support sought or obtained in the relationship (emotional or instrumental). Whereas consumer interviews reflected references to all four models of interaction, only two appeared in DTCA. The limited range of interactions seen in these advertisements creates a lack of congruity between interaction styles found in advertisements vs. styles reported by actual consumers.

An Examination of the Use of Gendered Language in Stephen King's CARRIE

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeKeywords: gender studieshorrorStephen King

Establishing and Adhering to Sexual Consent: The Association between Reading Magazines and College Students’ Sexual Consent Negotiation

Content analyses have cataloged the sexual scripts present in magazines largely because of their perceived value to readers and their potential role as sex educators. Although it is generally agreed that magazines have the potential to influence sexual attitudes and behavioral intentions, the effects of this medium are not as frequently researched as are other forms of media. The current study tested whether exposure to magazines was associated with intentions related to sexual consent negotiation. A survey of 313 college students indicated that exposure to men's magazines was significantly associated with lower intentions to seek sexual consent and lower intentions to adhere to decisions about sexual consent. In contrast, exposure to women's magazines was significantly associated with greater intentions to refuse unwanted sexual activity. Overall, the findings of this study further reinforce the critical need for responsible and realistic portrayals of sex in entertainment media, specifically magazines.

A Current Appraisal of Health- and Nutrition-Related Claims in Magazine Food Advertisements

This article reports a content analysis of health- and nutrition-related claims used in food advertisements in popular women's and men's magazines. The authors analyzed 734 food ads and 100 magazine issues. Their research shows that nutrient content claims (i.e., ones that focus on a specific nutrient component such as “low in fat”) are the most predominantly used, followed by general nutrition claims, structure/function claims, and healthy claims. The least used category is health claims, in which the advertised food is linked to reduced risk of a disease or health problem. The use of health- and nutrition-related claims differs across different food groups and types of magazines.

Made, laid and paid: photographic masculinities in a black men's magazine

Glossy men's magazines are frequently vilified for their overt visualising of gender stereotypes. This article tenders that as a niche publication, founded by and targeted at upwardly mobile black men during the early stages of democracy in South Africa, the aspirational photographs of black men in BL!NK magazine are a justified form of visual short-hand. The argument is made here that although the photographic representation of black masculinity is entangled in stereotypes associated with (white) Western, hetero-normative manhood, the images offer just enough differentiation from the norm that they may be deemed seditious within the particular historical context. This article comprises an analysis of the photographs of black men in one sample issue of BL!NK and thereby positions this magazine as an archive of South African identities that both endorsed and challenged staid gender tropes. By naming, analysing and historically situating three specific photographic typologies of black manhood typically found in BL!NK, the author hopes to underscore the importance of such niche publications as points of intersection between global and vernacular culture, and powerful platforms for the visceral trying on of new selves.

“New Man” and “New Lad” with Chinese Characteristics? Cosmopolitanism, Cultural Hybridity and Men's Lifestyle Magazines in China

In China, although “general interest” magazines can be said to have existed during the Maoist and early post-Maoist eras, Western-style magazines that promote a consumerist lifestyle came into being and gained widespread popularity only in the past two decades. Among them, an entire group of titles consists of localised Chinese editions of internationally popular lifestyle magazines. This paper explores the interaction of global trends and influences with local cultures and realities in men's lifestyle magazines published in China. In particular, it discusses the Chinese “variations” of the Western “new man” and “new lad” types of male image. Despite the superficial similarities with Western images, critical readings and quantitative studies of the verbal and visual content of these magazines reveal some distinctive “Chinese” features. As a form of popular culture, the men's lifestyle magazine lends expression to the fantasies, desires and needs of “new rich” men in China. With consumerism and aspirationalism at the centre of its ideological construction, it serves as an interesting site of negotiation between what Lisa Rofel calls the two aspects of “cosmopolitanism with Chinese characteristics” – namely, a self-conscious transcendence of locality and a domestication of cosmopolitanism by way of renegotiating China's place in the world.

Smoke and Mirrors: A Critique of Women Olympians' Nude Reflections

In this essay a selection of images of women Olympians who have opted to pose nude in calendars, in Playboy magazine and in mainstream men's magazines is critically analysed. It is argued that when women athletes pose nude, their talent and incredible skill are trivialised because they are sexually objectified. Based on Nussbaum's theory of objectification, a continuum is developed to analyse the said images. The analysis highlights theories of sexualisation, heteronormative culture, and homophobia which are entangled within the apparent justifications for posing nude. These are rejected in favour of the objectification critique.

Domestic Violence in Men's and Women's Magazines: Women Are Guilty of Choosing the Wrong Men, Men Are Not Guilty of Hitting Women

Men's and women's magazine discourse on domestic violence characterizes women as guilty of choosing the wrong men but does not hold men responsible for hitting women. Using qualitative narrative analysis on 10 leading titles over 10 years, I find an ongoing tolerance for and celebration of domestic violence in men's magazines and an enduring expectation in women's that women bear responsibility for both genders. No magazines discuss patriarchal cultural structures that enable violence against women.

‘Papa don't preach’: Fatherhood in a South African Christian men's magazine

The first international men's lifestyle magazine to enter South Africa was Men's Health in 1997, followed by FHM and GQ. Not unlike their international counterparts, these magazines have been extolled in the publishing sector for their commercial success and disparaged in academia for their potentially negative influence on the sensitive gender politics of the new South Africa. In 2001, a new breed of men's lifestyle magazine emerged in South Africa: one that catered to a particular cultural or racial niche market that presumably was not satisfied by the generalising tone of the mainstream men's lifestyle magazines. The Afrikaans Christian magazine MaksiMan is the subject of this analysis, as much for what it signifies in terms of the presence of vernacular masculinities in post-apartheid South Africa as for the texture that it brings to the genre of men's lifestyle magazines. Mainstream men's magazines typically refuse to include reference to the role of father that certain of their readers might occupy. MaksiMan breaks this trend through articles and features centred on fatherhood. This article comprises an analysis of the representation of fatherhood within this niche men's lifestyle magazine.

Esquire Mans the Kitchenette

In this article, I examine representations of masculinity and domestic cooking in Esquire's “Man the Kitchenette,” a cooking column for men published in the 1940s. Using qualitative content analysis, I examine how these representations recoded an interest in food and domestic cooking (as well as other traditionally “feminine” interests) as appropriately masculine, nurturing the development of the positive image of the “male consumer” and paving the way for the emergence of future men's lifestyle and culinary magazines.

A content analysis of magazine diets in relation to the Eatwell Plate

Background: Current predictions suggest that by 2050 over half of the adult population will be classified as obese (Foresight Report, 2007). The media is a known platform for nutrition education and research indicates that health magazines specifically are highly influential in terms of their impact on health and diet (Hill, 2006). Whilst studies have examined the influence of magazine advertising on food choice, none have analysed the nutritional content of magazine diets in relation to healthy eating guidelines, or their influence over healthy dietary behaviours. The aim of this study was to identify whether the diets published in magazines adhere to national healthy eating guidelines as depicted by the Eatwell Plate (Food Standards Agency, 2007). Methods: The 15 best selling diet and health magazines were identified from national sales data and purchased from a single retailer in December 2009, with the cost of each magazine noted. Inclusion criteria were defined as the presence of a health theme, target audience within 18–54 years and incorporation of a 7-day diet plan. Diet plans were analysed using content analysis. Food lists were devised and coded through a deductive approach by cross referencing against the Eatwell Plate and previous content analysis studies. Associated word lists to determine subconscious influence were devised and coded using inductive content analysis. Each diet was analysed for food or word references which were counted against the relevant codes. References were collated as a total across all magazines and presented as the number cited by category as a percentage of the total. Descriptive statistics were used to present the data. Ethical approval was gained from Leeds Metropolitan University Research Ethics Committee. Results: Ten magazines (seven women's; three men's) met the inclusion criteria, representing a full target age range and varied cost (£2.60–£3.95). In total 1155 food references and 266 word references were cited. Fruit and vegetables were referenced most frequently (37.7%), exceeding the Eatwell Plate recommendation (33.3%); carbohydrates were referenced poorly (20.5%), below the 33.3% recommendation; protein (22.3%) was above the 13% recommendation; dairy foods (13.5%) met the Eatwell Plate recommendation (13%). No magazine represented an accurate depiction of the Eatwell Plate model. The associated words attracting most references were for fluid (15%), fat (14.3%), protein (11.3%) and energy (10.5%) with protein referenced more often in men's magazines and calories more often in women's. Discussion: The lack of evidenced based and balanced dietary information in magazine diets was of concern and contradicted government health promotion strategies. The magazines promoted popular dietary trends as opposed to evidence based healthy eating guidance. The evident repetition of words relating to calories and fat does little to promote healthy dietary behaviours and little emphasis was placed on multi-component dietary and lifestyle approaches. Conclusion: The magazine diets did not meet the Eatwell Plate guidelines, highlighting the need for furthercollaboration between the media and health professionals in order to improve public understanding and help shape the future of public health in relation to obesity prevention.

The Changing Marketing of Smokeless Tobacco in Magazine Advertisements

Concerns about secondhand smoke, increasing indoor smoking bans, and health concerns regarding cigarettes are contributing to the development of new smokeless tobacco (ST) products by the tobacco industry and the repositioning of traditional ST products. The objective of this research was to systematically document the changing advertising strategies and themes of the ST industry. Using descriptive content analysis, this study analyzed 17 nationally circulated magazines for ST advertisements (ads) from 1998-1999 and 2005-2006, recording both magazine and advertisement characteristics (e.g., themes, selling proposition, people portrayed, and setting/surroundings.) Ninety-five unique ads were found during the two time periods-occurring with total frequency of 290 ad placements in 816 issues. One hundred ninety-one ads were found in the 2005-2006 sample, while 99 were found in the 1998-1999 magazines. Significant differences in ST ads were identified between time periods and magazine types. A greater percentage of ads were found in the latter time period, and the average number of ads per issue increased (0.24 in 1998-1999 and 0.49 in 2005-2006, p < .001). More recent magazines and general adult magazines contained a greater proportion of flavored products, "alternative to cigarette" messages, and indoor settings when compared with earlier magazines and men's magazines, respectively. While continuing to advertise in men's magazines with themes appealing to men and "traditional" ST users, the ST industry appears to be simultaneously changing its message placement and content in order to include readers of general adult magazines who may not currently use ST.

Current Bibliography

Current Bibliography Amanda Carella, Corey J. Dahl, Adam Lownik, and Ted Weiers [The current bibliography aspires to include all serious contributions to Hemingway scholarship. Given the substantial quantity of significant critical work appearing on Hemingway's life and writings annually, inconsequential items from the popular press have been omitted to facilitate the distinction of important developments and trends in the field. Annotations for articles appearing in The Hemingway Review have been omitted due to the immediate availability of abstracts introducing each issue. Kelli Larson welcomes your assistance in keeping this feature current. Please send reprints, clippings, and photocopies of articles, as well as notices of new books, directly to Larson at the University of St. Thomas, 333 JRC, 2115 Summit Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55105-1096. E-Mail: Kalarson1@stthomas.edu.] Books Brasch, James D. That Other Hemingway: The Master Inventor. Victoria, B.C.: Trafford, 2010. [On EH's life in Cuba. Brasch provides a context for his 1981 Hemingway's Library: A Composite Record, a catalogue of EH's immense library at the Finca Vigía (now available on line from the John F. Kennedy Library). Surveys those volumes devoted to poetry and art (Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Charles Baudelaire, Lord Byron, Paul Cézanne and others) to reveal the breadth of Hemingway's intellectual curiosity and suggests that "knowledge, not experience, was the source of invention." Interviews with EH's personal physician and friend Dr. José Luis Herrera Sotolongo describe EH's activities during the Spanish Civil War and sympathy for the Cuban Revolution. Examines EH's correspondence with Malcom Cowley and Bernard Berenson, reconstructing his complicated relationship with each man and revealing the depths of his loneliness while living in Cuba. Concludes with logs of their correspondence and an inventory of books [End Page 129] by and about EH in Berenson's personal library. Relies on previously published material.] Bryfonski, Dedria, ed. Male and Female Roles in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Detroit: Greenhaven P, 2010. [Collection of reprinted excerpts ranging from 1952 through 2007 on gender issues by such well-known Hemingway scholars as Carlos Baker, Debra A. Moddelmog, Nancy R. Comley and Robert Scholes. Geared to young adult readers.] Earle, David M. All Man! Hemingway, 1950s Men's Magazines, and the Masculine Persona. Kent, OH: Kent State UP, 2009. [Introduction to 1950s pulp men's magazines focusing specifically on the popular image of EH in relation to the development of postwar hypermasculinity and misogyny. Earle's study "is not about Hemingway's fiction but Hemingway himself as a fiction, as a popular representation, and as an innately visual image that grows out of twentieth-century mass media and the dynamics of midcentury gender." Discusses EH's celebrity, both its rise and fall, beginning with the author's earliest pulp fragments housed at the John F. Kennedy Library. Loaded with visually stunning full color illustrations.] Eisler, Rudolf. Reader's Guide to Ernest Hemingway. New Delhi, India: Centrum Press, 2009. [Not seen.] Federspiel, Michael R. Picturing Hemingway's Michigan. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2010. [Explores EH's early summers spent in the Little Traverse Bay area of Northern Michigan and the profound influence of the region on his later work. Provides an historical context, tracing the region's dramatic evolution from rural lumbering tract to vacation hotspot in the early 1900s. Combines over 250 black-and-white photographs, maps, illustrations, and postcards along with commentaries and excerpts from EH's stories, letters, and journals to create a picture of the people and places of Northern Michigan that serve as backdrop for so many of his writings.] Hasan, Rabiul. Rediscovering Hemingway in Bangladesh and India, 1971-2006. Lanham, MD: UP of America, 2010. [Surveys the teaching, reception, and influence of EH's works in Bangladesh and India from 1971 to 2006, revealing the growing interest in EH studies in the Indian sub-continent. Opens with a brief overview of American and British criticism before moving into a survey of Indian and Bangladeshi criticism on EH's short stories and novels and the challenges specific to teaching American literature in Bangladesh and India. Closes with an assessment of EH's reputation and continued relevance among academics...

Magazine and reader constructions of ‘metrosexuality’ and masculinity: a membership categorisation analysis

Since the launch of men's lifestyle magazines in the 1980s, academic literature has predominantly focused on them as a cultural phenomenon arising from entrepreneurial and commercial initiatives and/or as cultural texts that proffer representations of masculinity such as ‘new lad’ and ‘new dad’. This paper steps aside from the focus on culture and, instead, treats magazine content as a discursive space in which gender and sexuality are oriented to, negotiated, and accomplished within and beyond the magazine itself (i.e. through readers' responses). Specifically, membership categorisation analysis is deployed to explore how the relatively new (and perhaps alternative) category for men – ‘metrosexual’ – is presented and received. Our analysis suggests that masculinity concerns are central in debates about ‘metrosexuality’, with self-identified ‘metrosexuals’ invoking heterosexual prowess and self-respect on the one hand, and critics (e.g. self-identified ‘real men’) lamenting ‘metrosexuality’ for its perceived effeminacy and lack of authenticity on the other. Implications for understanding contemporary masculinities are discussed.

Men's media use, sexual cognitions, and sexual risk behavior: Testing a mediational model.

Efforts to link media use to adolescents' sexual initiation have produced somewhat inconsistent results, perhaps as a result of the limited framing of the question. This study sought to expand current approaches by sampling college students instead of high school students, by investigating a range of sexual behaviors and media formats, and by testing a model that featured sexual cognitions as mediators. We tested our model with a sample of 796 heterosexual, male college students who reported on their regular consumption of 4 media (prime-time TV programs, music videos, movies, and men's magazines); their attitudes toward abstinence, the male sexual role, and nonrelational sex; their perceptions of peer sexual behavior; and several aspects of their sexual behavior (e.g., number of sexual partners). Findings revealed strong support for our mediated model, with exposure to men's magazines and movies contributing most strongly to their sexual cognitions, and with men's cognitions, in turn, contributing heavily to their sexual behavior. Some direct connections from media use to sexual behavior also emerged. Together, the findings provide insight into both potential mechanisms for and new approaches to addressing this issue.

Persuasive Visual: Body Language and Semantic Relationship Patterns in Press Commercials

Contemporary popular culture is closely related to visual communication and its standing out phenomenon – advertising. Theorists and various researchers agree about the impact commercials have on individuals, economics, and culture. However, the question, why advertising is so effective even when the message receivers are aware of the deliberate intentions of these communicative items, still has no clear answer. Nationwide it has not been researched yet. The aim of this article is to find out semantic patterns of body language that function as communicative strategies while consuming visual discourse. The semiotic analysis is applied as the research method of commercials. Advertisements from the press that cover women and men magazines, professional and entertainment publications, and national as well as international editions are investigated. Five-year period samples allow to present universal body language use and human body depiction classifications. The main conclusion is that body in visual discourse of commercials is reduced to the instrument of persuasion: body figures simultaneously generate the meaning of the message and inscribe certain values. Because of this constant figurative overshadow and overlap of discursive levels of utterance and annunciation the offering of prescribed benefits and pleasures is so simple and so effective. Keywords: annunciation, advertisement, advertising, body, body language, commercial, decoding, discourse, encoding, meaning, model, pattern, persuasion, press, relationship, semiotics, sense, slogan, strategy, utterance, value, visual.

Masculine sexuality: A critical discourse analysis of FHM

This article aims to investigate the linguistic construction of gender ideology in the men's lifestyle magazine For Him Magazine (FHM), by investigating its approach to masculine sexuality. A critical discourse analytic (CDA) framework, based on Fairclough (2003), as well as Kitis and Milapides (1997), was used to qualitatively analyse two articles on sex. The findings suggest that magazines like FHM approach sexuality as a test of men's masculinity without paying attention to the relationship in which sex occurs. However, when confronted by readers’ personal questions, this approach is altered in order to acknowledge the importance of such relationships. One consequence is that the importance of gaining women's consent before engaging in sexual experiments is highlighted.

Daniel A. Clark . Creating the College Man: American Mass Magazines and Middle‐Class Manhood, 1890–1915 . (Studies in American Thought and Culture.) Madison : University of Wisconsin Press . 2010 . Pp. viii, 256. $26.95.

In this book Daniel A. Clark brilliantly interweaves gender, business, and literary history to shed light on the evolution of higher education in America. His primary argument is that the country's first mass-market men's magazines dramatically changed the view of their readers (middle to upper-class “old stock” whites) toward college in the Progressive era, persuading them that it was an essential experience for their sons and upper-level employees. This belief in the importance of higher education has broadened over time, and college graduates today are a vast, multicultural group. They were much more homogenous, however, in the nineteenth century, when colleges attracted a tiny fraction of the populace, chiefly white men who planned to become doctors, lawyers, or ministers. Other people were either excluded from college for various reasons (race and gender among them) or preferred not to attend. Aspiring businessmen in particular knew they could get ahead in life without college, and they considered the Victorian collegiate focus on dead languages to be a complete waste of time. They also feared colleges, which were often accused of transforming wholesome young men into bibulous dandies. This accusation may well have been false, but it compelled nineteenth-century U.S. presidents (most of whom were college graduates) to pretend that they had educated themselves by candlelight in log cabins.

“Gay or not?!”: Gay men, straight masculinities, and the construction of the Details audience

This article examines representations of gayness in Details since the magazine's transformation from a gay-associated style publication to a men's lifestyle magazine targeting straight men. Whereas queer communication scholars have shown gayness is often used to demarcate differences between gay and straight masculinities to make domestic consumption a “masculine” practice for straight men, I argue Details also utilized gayness to construct differences between *straight* masculinities. These differences allowed Details to distinguish itself from competitors, using gayness to construct new male audiences around masculinities previously ignored in the men's magazine market and legitimize them as “authentic” straight identities. This case is significant for the study of consumer masculinities and male-targeted media, asserting the relationship between gay men and straight consumption must be theorized as a dynamic and discursive pattern of gender relations.

Relationship Advice in Top-Selling Men's Magazines: A Qualitative Document Analysis

The bulk of men's magazines contain advice columns which counsel readers on relationships. The viewers heed the information provided to them and apply it to their own lives and relationships. As a result, it is imperative to study the relationship advice men are seeking in these magazines. The purpose of this study was to analyze the intimate relational content and advice contained in five top-selling men's interest magazines. Findings indicate the magazines contain messages consistent with stereotypic gender socialization which reinforce male masculinity. Sex was depicted as a top priority in relationships, and the sexual lives of men were portrayed as idealistic. Most advice was contrary to research on the formation of deep friendship and intimate relationships.