Out of my selection of freshly purchased lads’ mags it was Zoo that drew me in first. With the tantalising prospect of discovering 101 things I never knew about sex, and the promise of ‘Imogen’s Rudest Ever Pics’ (Imogen’s the girl that everyone’s talking about, by the way) it was hard to resist dipping into its tacky, tacky pages.
The first thing I notice as I start flicking through is that Zoo really isn’t all that different to magazines such as More! or Grazia. I’m immediately met with a double page spread of teens frolicking on the beach in bikinis. These might be ‘REAL SEXY YOUNG WOMEN!’ but the pages are not at all dissimilar to the articles on celebrity beach bodies – who’s hot and who’s not – that constantly run in women’s weeklies. Zoo’s ‘Babe Bulletin’ is also definitely comparable to More’s ‘Man of the Week’. It just contains more bum and boobs and captions like ‘Latin Lovely Lorena’. There’s even a position of the week acted out by barbie dolls, just like More!’s back page. Although while More! slip the word ‘clitoris’ and ‘stimulate’ and ‘cuddle’ in a good twenty odd times, Zoo’s only nod towards women during ‘The Bone Throne’ seems to be to advise the men “not to think of this as degrading a woman by getting her to perform as a chair.” Excellent.
Once the novelty of boobs and excessive exclamation marks wore off though, Zoo became very boring very quickly. My perseverance through the jokes sections, sports section and pages and pages of very soft-core porn were somewhat rewarded at the end when I reach the classifieds; for just 46p per minute I can listen to Abi “playing with her pink bits” or have someone “frigg her bits while I jerk”. After I start to wonder who actually calls these numbers, though, I just feel a bit sad.
After my frolic through Zoo it’s on to a classier option: FHM. For my £3.90 (£3.90!) I get a pull-out – FHM’s 100 Sexiest Women – totally worth it. Rosie Huntington-Whitely is Number 1, if you’re interested. While Zoo was at least horribly entertaining, beyond its glossy pretences FHM is really just boring. It’s filled with a random collection of manly articles about lava and trekking in the amazon, jokes pages and a really weird interview with a glamour model where she pretends the interviewer is her boyfriend (Q: If you came home and found me trying on your undies, how would you react? A: I’d find it a bit odd, but I wouldn’t be too freaked out. I’d talk to you about it and try to find out if you’ve got any hidden fetishes that we could explore…).
While women’s magazines are typically filled with sex tips and relationship advise, I’m somewhat surprised to find that the only advise FHM offers is “HOW TO DUMP HER”. Apparently, if you’re uncertain whether a relationship is over or not, when your girlfriend despises spending time with you and that the thought of her sleeping around makes you happy, it’s a good indicator. Truly startling and shocking insights.
Finally, I pick up GQ. And what a treat it is. No, seriously, I genuinely enjoyed GQ; I might actually start buying it. Unlike FHM, it certainly more than justifies the £3.99 price tag. I think, though, that my new found love for GQ has less to do with it’s collection of articles on a variety of topics, and more to do with the fact that it hits the aspirational note I subconsciously desire from glossy magazines. Sure, the focus is on technology and men’s clothes rather than high fashion and make-up, but it’s sleek pages still offer a taste of much needed glamour.
That Imogen looks like a troll. What was Giggsy thinking?