Word: maxims
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...resist the urge to adopt opinions that appear to derive from our identities and instead cloak ourselves in the liberal traditions of open-minded observation, logic, and close analysis. Instead of sticking by our favored X, Y constructions, maybe we should instead subscribe only to a single shared maxim: As a student, I feel curious...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...