Rolling Stone Gang Gives Aging Macho Guys a Voice

Men picked up this new magazine from the gang at Rolling Stone and flipped the pages with casual self-interest: “Hmmm. . . . Oh. . . . Interesting.”

Women spotted the title--Men’s Journal--and moved through more suspiciously, like female UPS employees delivering a package to the all-male Bohemian Grove.

Most nodded approvingly at the photo spread of Olympian Dara Torres--a black and white study that presents the swimmer as attractive, but decidedly strong and unobjectified. They also shrugged or smiled tolerantly at stories on travel, sports and fitness.

But the photo on Page 31 stopped women browsers cold, evoking snorts of laughter or snide muttering: “Oh, come on, boys!”

What most men saw on that page was an action shot: a guy in shorts leaping against a cloudy sky, clutching a tennis racket and wearing leg supports. It was an apt illustration for the article, “Tennis for Tough Guys.”

What women saw was an eye-level crotch shot and, so they say, all the testosterone-fueled, hairy-legged, macho tomfoolery that such an image implies.

It’s all a matter of perspective.

Jann Wenner, the creator of Rolling Stone (and US--the Entertainment Weekly) and John Rasmus, former editor of Outside magazine, have been cobbling Men’s Journal for two years. During that time, two heavily hyped manly magazines--Men’s Life and Smart for Men--were launched upon the stormy economic waters and promptly sank.

Still, Wenner’s Straight Arrow publishing company has set a damn-the-torpedoes course with Men’s Journal, which premieres this week and will go bimonthly in the fall.

Powered by the stable of writers from Rolling Stone and Outside, and fueled by a healthy 83 pages of paid advertisements, the premiere issue looks as if it may just hit that elusive target audience of upscale male magazine readers.

“We think, contrary to some,” Rasmus and Wenner write in their Letter from the Editors, “that men of our generation are already pretty good husbands and fathers and lovers and sons, and they’re getting better in their roles every day (to which we credit, in part, the women’s movement).

“But they also want to do more with their lives, individually and with the people around them. Men have always been oriented toward action and accomplishment, a perspective that life is, or should be, an adventure--a story worth telling, a contrast as well as a collaboration.”

Rasmus says Men’s Journal will not be “escapism per se.” Rather, it will “add another dimension to lives that are already pretty full of stresses and responsibilities.”

It will address the “older end of the Rolling Stone audience,” says Wenner, who, at 46, would seem to fit the bill.

An even clearer hint of just whom the editors are aiming at--and how--is glimpsed in the first ad you encounter on opening the magazine. A plug for that most ubiquitous of athletic shoe companies, it reads:

“When you’re old, and tired, and suspicious, and plagued with doubt, you’ll hear the world calling you. You’ll wish with all your heart you’d taken the time to listen to it. And you’ll be filled with regret.”

On the next page, a hairy-legged guy in his 30s or so jumps about on some rocks, going for the gusto with a just-do-it joie de vivre. The ad concludes: “Or maybe not.”

That’s a powerful message for a segment of aging Rolling Stone readers--the folks who suffered the deepest Angst in the young-versus-old Elvis stamp issue, the jocks who wear Dockers.

This magazine addresses that market so relentlessly, the editors might have titled it “Midlife Crisis.”

Hemingway’s ghost asserts his presence on every page, although, as translated by this generation, he’s lightened up a lot.

For example, in his lead story on fighting the big fish of Key West, the inimitable P. J. O’Rourke writes that, “Deep-sea fishing is as close as a middle-aged man gets to heaven--unless he’s not watching his cholesterol.”

He later adds: “Everybody on the boat had a job. My job was not to throw up. This is the one, entire skill to being a deep-sea fisherman--not punting your bran muffins.”

Other stories include an amusing piece by Roy Blount Jr. on learning to drive race cars, a fine Tim Cahill travel tale about sea kayaking the Northwest Passage, and a yarn by David Roberts in which he explores the parallels between middle-aged mountaineer Jeff Lowe’s climb of the Eiger’s north face and the challenges of Lowe’s flatland life.

So far, a large-format clone of Outside, right?

But then they throw in an armchair profile of Wayne Gretsky, that stuff on tennis and, most telling, several pieces on the wimpiest of all psuedo-sports: golf.

It’s those non-purist outdoor activities that distinguish this magazine most clearly from Outside.

Overall, Men’s Journal is a handsome mix of striking graphics and well-crafted writing. Whether all those Type-A baby boomer men with shin splints will find time to plot their increasingly infrequent adventures in the magazine’s pages, or to live vicariously there, remains to be seen.

If they do, there are plenty of advertisers with products to peddle.

The most unusual, most moving and most annoying story in the premiere issue best sums up the magazine.

In “A Cabin by the Sea,” Charles Gaines writes of leading his wife and three children to Nova Scotia to build their dream vacation cabin and finds more than cheap lobster and a place to glower at old age.

Gaines can’t resist throwing in a few bad Hemingway contest rejects: “I wanted the summer to be strong and hard.” But up there in the fog and trees he also finds what many men of a certain age long for: a tranquil, unpolluted landscape; a community of people who have lived there for generations, who value close family bonds and find meaning in the simple life.

Gaines writes eloquently about that discovery.

But as the archetype of the Men’s Journal man, he can’t help but mention, with no apparent irony, a few improvements his family brought to that newfound Thoreauvian bliss: a 21-foot sailboat, a sea kayak, an aluminum rowboat, an inflatable raft, windsurfers, mountain bikes, water skis, snorkeling gear, fishing tackle, a skeet-shooting shotgun, a giant kite and a skateboarding ramp.

He doesn’t say whether he got around to putting in the tennis court he envisioned.

REQUIRED READING

For 15 years, the New York Times resisted pressure from activists to use the word gay , except as a synonym for happy. Now, according to a two-part series beginning in this week’s The Advocate, a gay and lesbian weekly, the Gray Lady is in the grips of a “lavender enlightenment.”

According to the stories, the New York Times alleged anti-gay bias began to change when Executive Editor Max Frankel took the reins. Homophobic quips are no longer tolerated in the newsroom, and the work environment has improved for gay journalists, writes Michelangelo Signorile. More significant, the reportage on gay-related issues has increased substantially, he writes.

While the articles are reportedly the talk of East Coast media circles, West Coast readers will also find material to discuss.

Signorile did a computerized database search of several papers, including the Los Angeles Times. He found that this Times “had significantly more stories about gays than any of the other three papers and almost double that of the New York Times.” But he attributes that to the fact that the Los Angeles Times has more news pages.

“A closer look at the Los Angeles Times shows that the stories about lesbians and gays turn up predominantly in the View, Calendar, and Metro sections of the paper and rarely in the national news section. While the Los Angeles Times had twice as many stories as the New York Times, the New York Times was twice as likely to put stories about gays and lesbians on the front page.”