GQ (1-year)

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!

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?


Recent changes have ruined a once great men's magazine   January 1, 2004
Don Graeter (Prospect, KY USA)
81 out of 100 found this review helpful

I've been a GQ subscriber for over 20 years but recently dropped my subscription. This is no longer the great men's magazine it once was. The features have dwindled in substance in favor of pictures and been overwhelmed by exploding ad content, making the "meat" minimal and very difficult to find.

Space which used to be devoted to interesting fashion, travel, "mixology" and dining has been diverted to titillating "skin" shots and silly lists of things which are uninteresting, useless and often offensive. What little fashion remains will be useless to those who inhabit even a semi-traditional world, though if your taste runs to 4 day beards, long uncombed hair and leather, you'll love it.

Also permeating the "new" magazine is a very heavy handed political agenda. The old GQ profiled politicians on occasion but with a focus on their personal side and without political "spin" to the story. Every issue of the new GQ trashes conservatives and Republicans from cover to cover. Examples---the current issue somehow finds a way to take a swipe at President Bush under the pretext of answering a reader question about loafers; a profile of singer Toby Keith is sneeringly derisive of his pro-U.S. songs; a recent review of several new British mystery writers found a way to spend much of its space trashing Margaret Thatcher, etc., etc.

So, the old GQ wasn't political and did a great job focusing on a broad range of fashion and other items of interest to guys with an emphasis on the traditional. It was interesting, entertaining and informative. The new GQ seems to me to have minimal use for anyone, even big city "hipsters" on whom the publishers have decided to focus. If you want liberal politics, or "skin" photos, you have far better magazine choices. There's precious little else left in GQ except for the scruffy guys in page after page of ads.


GQ has lost its way.....   August 26, 2005
A. G. Corwin (St. Louis, MO)
39 out of 47 found this review helpful

GQ has undergone a major transformation in the last several years from a sophisticated men's magazine geared towards professional, intelligent men to a magazine that attempts to stay relevant in a world where Maxim and FHM dominate. The writing has gotten progressively worse, although Alan Richman remains as good as always on food and wine. The photography is nowhere near the quality of a Vanity Fair, and I for one have enough magazines that have bikini clad women arrayed seductively on the front. I don't need more Jessica Simpson. (caveat: Jessica Alba cover was amazing). I subscribed to GQ because it was different from the rest. Now it looks and feels somewhat trashy. Though there are the occasional great articles, for me, Esquire is a much better magazine overall. I even subscribe to Vanity Fair which seems more appealing these days. Barring any major improvements in the next 5 months, I will let that subscription lapse.




Postives Far Outweigh Negatives   November 7, 2001
D (Metro Detroit, MI USA)
23 out of 25 found this review helpful

GQ presents a difficult paradox of a magazine. There are many reasons to dislike GQ: Its pretentiousness, the focus on unobtainable clothing, the holier-than-thou writing.

But, there are so many positives about GQ that a subscription is not only recommended, it is almost required. First, and perhaps foremost, Alan Richman's food/restaurant columns. Second, Peter Bart (the once-deposed editor of Variety) writes a great Hollywood column. Third, GQ is far and away superior to its rivals, which I believe are Esquire and, somewhat surprisingly, Vanity Fair.

Fourth, the fashion features and celebrity interviews are beyond compare. Finally, GQ generally has one article a month that I would describe as investigative journalism, and these articles can't be missed.

All in all, GQ is an essential for any magazine rack.


Actually about 2 1/2 stars   April 9, 2004
17 out of 20 found this review helpful

The style in this magazine is incredible; it's expensive and very fashionable, with the occasional cheap item to cater to the peasant reader (i.e., everyone).

That said, the magazine is rife with flaws. Snobbish east-coast writing, awful music that is lauded for no reason other than its anonymity, still worse book reviews of Norman Mailer-style authors, shrill articles by naive hacks, and so on.

The clothes are great, but buy with caution.