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Last Modified : 8-3-2008
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Magazines > Crafts > Item 1
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GQ (1-year)
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Sales Rank: 13
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List Price: $47.88
$12.00
At Amazon
on 8-3-2008.
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Product Review
The "GQ look" is synonymous with classic cool and sophistication, and despite a recent outburst of trendy magazines (think Maxim and FHM) vying for the attention of young professional males, the steeped-in-tradition monthly GQ carries on without missing a beat. Yes, there's more décolletage gracing the cover than there used to be, but GQ continues to supply enough cultural commentary, celebrity profiles, features, and style guides to keep the modern man in touch with what's going on in the world from month to month.
GQ's ideal reader is probably one who actually might be able to afford any of the high-end suits, shoes, and watches featured among the countless ads packed between the covers. Though the average reader might enjoy scanning a fashion spread about steakhouses entitled "How to Dress for a Porterhouse" and reading articles like "50 Ways to Blow Your Bonus," it's unlikely that such folly holds much practical advice. Literary editor Walter Kirn keeps short fiction on display, and Alan Richman's writing on food and dining out is always entertaining, even when he comes across as borderline cranky. Two regular Q&A features, "The Style Guy" and "Dr. Sooth," run the gamut from when it's appropriate to wear a straw hat to problems in the bedroom.
--Brad Thomas Parsons
Product Description
GQ helps you look sharp and live smart. Each issue brings you revealing sports profiles, intimate photos of today's hottest up & coming actresses and models, tips on fine food & drink, sex, politics, fashion and grooming advice, The Style Guy's answers to your questions and so much more!
Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
I started reading GQ back in the mid-1980s. I was an undergraduate male, intent upon a political career in London. Thus, I felt GQ was a useful magazine to keep me up-to-date on the latest styles of dress, in addition to the occasional useful article on other topics of fashion, some sports, some travel, some pop culture -- after all, I was trying to be a 'happening' guy, and my social class and schooling (all conservative to the extreme, which in the big 80's was not out of place, but not cutting edge either) didn't give me all I needed to know. Since those days (and since radical shifts in the direction of my vocation), I have used GQ less and less. Then, about a year ago, I got one of those buy-magazines-and-win-millions offers (no, I didn't win), and one of the few magazines that held any interest to me in this particular list was GQ. So, I thought, a few dollars, and I'll get a magazine I like. Well, not quite. GQ is very different today than I remembered. For one thing, only one of the past many issues I've received has seemed something I would want arriving at my home (as I am now a priestly sort) -- apparently, in order to stand out in the men's magazine world, GQ feels it necessary to put an almost-naked woman on ever cover in some sultry pose. Now, fair enough, this is appealing to men, but an examination of issues ten years ago will show this was not the cover feature back then (usually it was a man on the cover, either a well-known person from sports or entertainment, or someone showing a fashion style). The April 2000 issue is more what I was used to -- it has on the cover Nomar Garciaparra, Alex Rodriguez, and Derek Jeter. Of course, the headline has to appeal to the prurient interest, reading that they play shortstop as well as play the field. Included on the cover are stories about 'Alaska's Wild, Wild Women', an anonymous story entitled 'My Mentor, My Rapist', and a story about a new 'trend' of men becoming voluntary castrati. EEK! This is certainly not the magazine I remember. I don't remember being titillated by GQ of the 80s (sure, there were advertisements that are always destined to have some sexual content, subtle and not-so-subtle), but GQ today is trying hard to compete with the almost (or maybe not almost) soft-core magazines such as Maxim. But I have found that I find very little of interest to actually read in GQ, and I am not so interested in the fashions or the sexual content any longer, so, I have come to the decision that GQ is no longer a magazine for me. And there seems to have been an explosion of advertisements -- so many, in fact, that it is hard to find the actual content of the magazine apart from the advertisements. Considering the number of advertisements (which, I must confess, all seem the same to me, and I'm an old PR guy, who used to teach advertising!), GQ should be paying me to look at the magazine! And, I'm sure, GQ doesn't expect it to be. While in many demographic respects I am exactly who they are targeting (a 30-something, white, educated male), it no longer fits my lifestyle, which has taken a different direction from 'popular' culture. GQ has a strong audience, but alas, it is no longer the magazine for me. Pass me 'The Economist', will you?
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GQ (1-year)
Available from Amazon
Price: $12.00
Updated on 8-3-2008.
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