India has always seen a surfeit of women’s magazines flooding the newsstands while men’s magazines have always been lagging behind. ‘Femina’, the queen of women’s magazines now sells in an improved, glossy and healthier format. ‘Savvy’, ‘New Woman’, ‘Women’s Era’ are the other popular publications in this genre. Besides these we also have ‘Society’, ‘Verve’, ‘Vogue’, ‘Cosmopolitan’, ‘Cosmo Girl’, ‘Good Housekeeping’, ‘Marie Claire’ and probably many more. Mumbai’s latest newspaper DNA has a Sunday magazine – Me, devoted solely to the fairer sex while India Today comes up with a monthly supplementary – India Today Woman. The only women’s publication that got phased away is ‘Eves Weekly’ but this was more of an exception than a rule. On the other hand, the only decent men’s magazine in the past – ‘Gentleman’ closed shop long ago. Today, the classy ‘Mans World’ and ‘Maxim’ remain the only representatives in the category of men’s magazines, holding undisputed sway over it with no competition anywhere around. ‘Man’s World’, recently renamed as MW claims to be the classiest men’s magazine while ‘Maxim’ claims to be ‘ The best thing to have happened to men since women’. It also claims to be the number one in the category of men’s magazines. Take the case of regional magazines. I have heard of a ‘Grihshobha’ in Hindi and a ‘Shananda’ in Bengali but have yet to come across a magazine for men, published in a vernacular language. What’s more - Mouth Shut has a category on Women’s magazines but none on Men’s magazines!
Why then, has men’s magazines been such laggards? If Hema Malini can edit a magazine like ‘New Woman’ and Aparna Sen can edit “Shananda’, why not Dev Anand come with something like ‘Evergreen Man’? Why did DNA not think of a Sunday supplement called ‘Men’ instead of ‘Me’ and why doesn’t ‘India Today’ have a ‘India Today Man’? Puzzling questions!
I have always tried to get to the bottom of this puzzling conundrum but success has eluded me so far.
Are women more voracious readers than we men are? Are they greater magazine-worms than we are?
Can’t be true. Book stores like Oxford, Crossword or Granth are equally patronised by both sexes. And so are libraries. If women have their Mills & Boon and Barbara Cartland so do men have their James Hadley Chase, Arthur Hailey, Ludlum, Forsyth and Grisham, proving that both love reading. In fact, I believe men are more into novel reading than women are. Then, why this lop sided-ness in case of men’s magazines? Why do publishers give a step-motherly treatment to men’s magazines?
A probable explanation maybe that the issues that chiefly attract men are business, politics, current affairs, entertainment, travel, sports and pornography and we already have many magazines in all these categories. Those interested in bikes and cars can choose from the many automobile magazines that dot the market. So is the case with gadget and gizmo enthusiasts who revel in their own niche magazines. Even photography, golfing and wrestling have their own magazines. Thus, there are very few topics left to address in an exclusive men’s magazine.
Another explanation can be that a large section of women are house-wives and have more time at their disposal for indulging in reading as a pastime. Women may disagree on this point but this may be a serious reason. That explains the enormous coverage in women magazines dedicated to pastime activities like cookery, embroidery, gardening etc.
A third explanation can be that these women’s magazines also enjoy an appreciable number of men clientele. For example, I personally love to leaf through ‘Femina’ and ‘Savvy’, for various reasons. But I am sure very few women would like to read an exclusive men’s magazine. I have seldom caught my wife peering into ‘Man’s world’ to ogle at the bare bodied photographs of hot male models. Definitely not as often as she has found me looking at photographs of girls on the glossy pages of ‘Femina’ or “Cosmopoliton’
Though I am not sure how ‘Man’s world’ and ‘Maxim’ are fairing in the readership sweepstakes, I do love reading them. Not just for their content but also for their glossy and stylish looks.
Whatever be the reasons, I wish there were many more men’s magazines so that readers could have multiple reading options. And women would not be one up on us.