The men’s magazine that needs to grow up. (GQ)

Member Name: redcockney

Product:	GQ
Date:	26/08/00 (173 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The style guide is kind of informative.

Disadvantages: The articles have become overtly cumbersome and silly.

This headline could be labelled at any one of the ‘magnificent seven’ men’s magazines that dominate
proceedings(‘FHM’, ‘Loaded’, ‘Esquire’, ‘Arena’, ‘GQ’, ‘Maxim’ and to some extents ‘Later’), but this is specifically applied to ‘GQ’.

Why? Stealing face....or rather ‘borrowing’ some of ‘The Face’ design layout and featuring some of the most blatantly awful tabloid style articles that really, really don’t belie what ‘GQ’ should stand for (compare and contrast the American edition with the British edition and tell me this isn’t so) which make it so awful.

Although certainly improved since the departure of James Brown (but his cohort Martin Deeson still remains), it’s choice of sensationalising certain celebrities (William Hague does not say: ‘I can drink 14 pints a day’....but neither does he deny or confirm it) such as the various unfortunate incidents in the life of the increasingly diminishing Dudley Moore (with which whose incidents in his earlier life would surely be best left unmentioned in polite company).

It always touts the wrong people (do we really need another interview with the irritating Jamie Oliver or another tip to be ‘the next big thing’?).

And it is filled with more than a third of it’s 300 pages with adverts....how can it seriously justify it’s asking price of £3.10? (Especially when the first 30 pages of the latest issue (September 2000) are nothing but adverts barring two short contents pages).

I couldn’t care less for the features about Alex Garland’s short story, Tony Parsons’ opinions about sexuality, what Boris Johnson’s opinions about the Mercedes 555 AMG are or what AA Gill was doing in Iceland. And the interviews with (the admittedly very pretty) Gisele Bundchen and
Rena Mero
(especially Rena Mero’s) tell us absolutely nothing new or what we didn’t already know about them.

Overall, it’s an infuriating read.

Summary: