Men’s Vogue Refused to Run a Gay Ad. But Which Straight Style Mags Do?
When glossy magazine publisher Conde Nast launched Men’s Vogue in 2005, the running joke was: How are they going to find enough sauve straight guys to put on the cover 12 times a year? After all, there are only so many George Clooneys. But then there were Will Smiths, Roger Federers, and Hugh Jackmans, and they made fine coverboys. That didn’t save the magazine, which is basically dead (okay, it’s still running twice a year). And neither did its refusal to recognize that, hey, gay men might actually read this thing.
But why appeal to them? Well, then-Men’s Vogue publisher William Li opted not to. Photographer Juergen Teller says this Marc Jacobs ad, featuring his friends and real life couple Dick Page and James Gibbs, was refused by the magazine. Says Teller, describing the controversies involving his Jacobs ad campaign shoots:
The Dakota ones caused nothing, and they are pretty hard-core. They are on the border of being too much, even for me. I don’t remember hearing much about it, but if there was any controversy it was very under the radar. Funnily enough the most complaints were about the series with Dick Page and James Gibbs because they are a gay couple. Men’s Vogue even refused to publish it. Dick is a very close friend of mine and I’ve known him for 20 years — he’s been part of the Marc family for 20 years. And I like the idea of having a gay couple in a men’s ad because it makes sense. And I wanted the ads to be like they are — very romantic, tender and sweet. I certainly didn’t want to have anything provocative, not at all. The only other controversy that comes to mind also involved Vogue — the women’s one — over an ad of a clothed Cindy Sherman and me in which I am grabbing her breasts. That caused a stir. Go figure.
But let’s not put all the blame on Men’s Vogue: We can’t recall the last time we saw an obviously gay ad in, say, GQ, which is headed by homo Jim Nelson. Or Details, which is stuffed with homoerotic advertising but not homosexual advertising, and is essentially a magazine for gay men who don’t know what to think about other gay men.
Then again, we’ve stopped reading these magazines, because we discovered something called The Internet. But maybe you folks are still reading rags like Esquire and Details — magazines targeted at the well-off, sophisticated and stylish male, who could as easily be gay as he is straight. If so, you know better than us. So please, flip through those ad pages, and correct us. Are any “straight” men’s style/culture/fashion magazines (read: not V Man) running explicitly gay advertising? Name ‘em, and the advertisers, so we can applaud their commercial exploitation of our greatest insecurity: fear of not being accepted by the cool kids.
So the gay people we’ve heard about celebrating their gay-ness at Conde Nast invent a Mag modeled after a women’s mag about fashion but exclude all the gayness from said new mag and then have it fail because (wonder of wonders) no straight men know or care about Vogue and get their style sense from Tiger Woods and Viagra ads? It’s like they added two plus two and got four. Who ever heard of such a thing!
Eh, who cares. Print is a media dinosaur. Thanks to the internet, we can read about what we want, when we want. And if that publication pisses us off? There’s probably another one just as good a w-w-w-dot away.
I assume the sentence about George Clooney being a suave straight guy was tongue-embedded-in-cheek.
Of course it was, Professor! How HE doin’!
Conde Nast named William Li head of Portfolio just in time to drive it into the ground. what a boob.
The problem is that the American marketing gurus have segregated male sexuality into gay and straight, with no room for anything in between. With this mindset, it’s little wonder there’s a phobic attitude to anything that deviates from the segregation paradigm.
Overall, Men’s Vogue seems to be showing signs of homophobia. Maybe a boycott is called for.
I also find that many liberals in the American publishing industry are terrified of male-male kissing scenes. Male beefcake may be OK in a certain context but male-male erotic kissing is forbidden.
It’s well known that liberals have this attitude.
This article is right on. When I first heard of men’s vogue, I subscribed. “Like Vogue, but more for ME,” I thought. It was trying WAY too hard not to be gay. I cancelled my subscription and I read regular Vogue, which it turns out, is far more for me than men’s vogue.
Next obvious article.
WHAT A JOKE!!
Is it just me or is there a general rule that you can make a woman’s version of something for men and have it be successful, but not the other way around.
No. 11,
No, you’re not imagining things. Women are generally very vain creatures who obsess and fetishize over the appearance of other women.
Don’t forget the influences of the cosmetics and fashion industries (both vanity industries) in propping up the women’s magazines. Although their circulations may not be great, they are propped up by the revenues from these industries.
@jason: Yes, one of America’s great double standards. Even in the most “liberal” American cities, two men or two women can’t walk hand-in-hand down the street without attracting undue attention, and, in many cases, rude and lewd comments from those who still feel it’s OK to do so — and it is, because so-called “liberals” are too afraid to speak up.
I believe that true acceptance is not going to come without the efforts of some very brave folks who have the courage to live completely openly — in EVERY respect — and do exactly the same things any other (straight) couple would do. It’s certainly not going to happen just by spicing up a few men’s magazines with gay ads.
It’s a very odd thing that has been going on forever, and I don’t really see an end to it. You can walk, talk and act like a duck, but as long as you don’t SAY you’re a duck, it’s okay. Take Men’s Health magazine, for example. Could anything be more in-your-face gay? But sprinkled like Mrs. Dash on the whole homoerotic casserole are tidbits about what do females really want, and satisying your woman sexually, and so on. It’s all pretty silly. I don’t claim to know the stats, but I’m sure that Men’s Health is still in business solel due to its gay readership, and there’s no way MH’s management doesn’t know it.
You could say it’s the same thing for Men’s Vogue coverboy
Clooney. If you’ve ever heard him speak as himself, you’ll know what I mean. He isn’t particularly careful about not being swish. (“Not that there’s anything wrong with that!”) But at the same time, there is always a new young model or cocktail waitress with him in obviously staged photographs. There is, for want of a better word, a schizophrenic quality to all this,
neither in nor out, but both.
Even in the most “liberal” American cities, two men or two women can’t walk hand-in-hand down the street without attracting undue attention
But of course in most “conservative” American cities, same-sex couples can walk down the street with impunity.
@Naed: What’s that supposed to mean?
@Naed:
amer cities, the bigger ones, arent liberal or conservative…they’re just big ole pots of action with many diff opinions…so use a different adjective bubba
btw , and off the subject..its kinda silly but doesnt george clooney come across as a guy with really bad breath..he looks it, i duuno, whatevs.