Double Standards In Magazine Covers

 Women are fun to look at naked.


A no-brainer, I know, but something I notice every time I look at a magazine these days. Which is a bit odd, since you'd imagine there would be a fair number of naked men on magazine covers too, if we lived in a society as progressive as we claim to be.

Not so. Women are mostly-naked on the covers of "Men's Interest" magazines (obvious), tattoo magazines (alright, tattoos are sexy), car magazines (we covered this), both women's and asexual fitness magazines (muscles, losing weight, fine. We need to see those results, sure), even weed magazines and generic, theoretically non-sexual Women's Interest stuff. Keira Knightly, I get it, you ended up being more high-fashion than Natalie Portman. That's cool. You don't have to wear a denim jacket without undershirt on the cover of In Style. That's not in style. There is no cover story about losing weight even. Who are you trying to impress with your small chest and flat stomach? I'm not going to buy this magazine. I can see you actually naked on the internet for free. What are you doing?

Amusingly, it seems the only interest group that seems to put predominantly-naked men on their covers are Hardcore Body Building magazines.

You know, those guys at the gym in tiny shorts, shaving their chests and admiring the only oiled-up men.

Them, and PlayGirl, I guess. But I've never seen a copy of PlayGirl get any closer to selling than making it as far as being opened and unceremoniously wadded up behind a toilet in the men's room stall.

On Being A Beta

This is going to sound like I'm very bad at disguising when I'm bragging–which is true; I'm very, very lousy when it comes to covering up how highly I regard myself in many respects, but mostly because I fear that if I ever sounded as modestly unmoved as I felt, I would believe it enough I might never convince myself again.

But in other, less depressing news:

I'm not sure how it happened, but I'm in another one of my "I am a sexy beast" stages. You just can't convince me otherwise. I see myself in the mirror at night and I'm more than a little impressed with what I'm seeing. Then I realize I do nothing and have changed nothing about my lifestyle to merrit this, and I love and hate myself a little bit more, wanting to purposefully brag so that others will hate me, because people hating you out of jealousy is the greatest feeling next to starring in a reality show on MTV.

The problem is I'm getting a little intimidated.

Not in an existential way, mind you. I'm not worried about the future, the upkeep on being a sexy person, nor the prospect of being more successful simply by virtue of being more attractive and then having to weigh that success against my own merits, forever wondering if the two are similar in kind enough to satisfy my own standards.

Really, I just catch my reflection in the bathroom and I'm worried that if I look at that guy funny he might beat me up.

I promise you, this is real. I am not making light of even a vague impulse merely to further the comedy routine, I really, truly feel a visceral fear of my own visage, because I'm so used to being easily fucked with and easily startle. Beta is putting in nicely, this is full-on Omega male behavior. If we were a pack of somethings, the females would hump me for dominance.

But now? Man, if I can keep up this B.S. front to you all long enough to really convince myself, my confidence might finally drop like a third, spiritual testicle that never quite descended.

And that could be pretty sweet.