But the magazines generally adhered to the philosophy of famous salesman Elmer Wheeler, who said to “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.” The headlines of the magazines were far more lurid and sensational then the actual stories inside the magazine. Stories of men rescuing women from the torture of savage natives or cruel enemy armies were common (as were tales of powerful Amazonian-like women and man-capturing gangs of female dominatrices). A favorite theme was the showdown between man and wild flesh-eating beasts and critters. Instead of articles about $10,000 watches and luxury vacations, the pages of the sweat magazines were filled with “true” (typically fictionalized or embellished) stories of war, survival, crime, safari, and the Old West. Products of the time, the magazines were certainly not politically correct. And to the men who hadn’t served, the magazines were a chance to live such adventures vicariously. Their wives and families who hadn’t experienced the horrors of war had only vague notions of what things had been like “over there.” In a life that seemed sterile and scrubbed clean, men’s magazines were an oasis of the kind of unfettered manliness and grit the men were used to. In contrast to their experiences overseas, life back home seemed dull and mundane. The readership largely consisted of GI’s who had fought and survived the Big One, men who had experienced both adventure and gruesome death and violence. These “men’s adventure” magazines catered to men of a different generation and reflected the taste and sensibilities of those men. Before Men’s Health and Maxim Magazine, before the men’s magazine category was dominated by glossy, slick publications, there were the “He-Man,” “pulp,” or “sweat magazines.”
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March 2023
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