Finding it proved a bit of a problem. While most of the bit-sized newsagents I visited in Cape Town’s inner city district stocked at least one of the country’s all-too-numerous men’s interest titles, silver foil wrapped copies of Men’s Health and a bumper freebie issue of FHM included, finding new rival title Blink wasn’t as easy. Possibly this was because I was in Cape Town, a city not known for its disproportionately high quotas of stylish majietas, or LSM 7+ black males, as they are defined in Sandton office blocks.
A magazine explicitly aimed at this rapidly emerging target market, ”the thinking man— rooted in Africa,” as the magazine’s editor Siphiwe Mpye describes his constituency, Blink represents a bold point of departure in a vigorously over-traded market. Vigorously over-traded? If you’re white, that is! As Mpye recently stated in an interview with rage.co.za, ”—black men are not represented correctly in local men’s mags. Content wise there’s nothing that says ME in any of them and visually, black models/personalities are just used to add a splash of colour.”
Talking of ghettoes, as it eventually turned out I found Blink in that epitome of upper-income white suburbia, Woolworths. Personally, I thought this quite revealing, and not in a cynical sense either. Having tightly defined their market, Blink aims to offer their affluent target audience something that speaks in a soothingly familiar voice.
”No matter what anyone says, most men’s issues in South Africa are not universal, they are race specific,” elaborated Mpye, with necessary candour. ”White men, for example, don’t have as bad a rep as black men when it comes to abuse and desertion issues. We want to tackle these problems head on and paint a new face for the black man. It is not artificial face either, because good black men are in abundance.”
Fighting words indeed, but what does the content say? If you to tend to regard pop magazines as necessary palliative for whiling away time on the loo or in a doctor’s waiting room, Blink offers a familiar panacea. It features handy tips on grooming, epigrammatic summaries of the latest cars, suitably gushing celebrity profiles, the odd CD review, useful definitions of a prostrate gland, specials offers on a walking safari, quite the usual blend of insight and ennui. The big difference, though, particularly over rival titles like Men’s Health and FHM, is that all of this content is locally generated, much of it by black (in the BEE sense) contributors.
Of the writing, Lolao Molao’s hilarious aside ”I dream of white girls”, published in the December/January 2005 issue, charmed me most with its brashness (”Mama, I don’t know why but I think these white girls are looking mighty fine!” reads its opening line). The same goes for the profile on media personality Sami Sabiti, which allowed him to speak insightfully about the contradictions of being young, successful and black. Still, come on guys, what’s with that profile photograph showing Sabiti reading the Greek playwright Aeschylus!
But more important is the fact that the magazine isn’t staffed by the usual behind-the-scenes honkies; the CEO of Blink Lifestyle (Pty) Ltd is Vuyo Radebe. Revealingly, the start-up capital for the magazine was largely derived from National Empowerment Fund and Orlyfunt Holdings (the latter company 40% owned by controversial mining magnate Brett Kebble’s JCI).
There are of course those cynics who will argue that thinking men, rooted in Africa or not, don’t read men’s interest magazines. The author Christopher Hope offers a good example. During a writing class I attended at UCT, he jokingly referred to GQ as a suit catalogue, which is a mild dismiss compared to the accusation that FHM and GQ are simply gentrified porn mags, Hustler-Lite if you would.
”There have been no such accusations,” responds FHM editor Brendon Cooper when I repeat this somewhat tawdry charge to him. FHM (circulation 114,640, ABC Jan – Jun 2004) is ”an up-market, premium men’s lifestyle magazine,” he tells me.
Launched locally in November 1999, the Media24 owned title is a spin-off of the wildly successful British FHM. Something of a GQ wannabe (a decidedly naff version at that) when it first hit the shelves, the magazine’s fortunes changed when it was acquired by British publishing giant EMAP in January 1994. Along with rival title Loaded, the magazine soon managed to carve out its own (very profitable) niche when it stopped trying to be so serious. It is a formula that has successfully been transplanted into South Africa.
”FHM’s success has been based on a combination of factors,” avers Cooper. ”Most importantly a clear editorial vision and philosophy which seeks to deliver the FHM brand values in every issue.” And what are these values? ”Sexy, Funny, Useful and Relevant,” states Cooper (the caps his emphasis).
Paging through FHM, the first two editorial precepts are manifestly self-evident. The writing is funny (my 20-year-old brother is a true believer!) and the photos, well, I’d be churlish if I didn’t admit to the charm of the magazine’s ”Homegrown Honeys”, a visual compendium of scantily dressed amateur models. But where’s the usefulness and relevance in this hot-blooded editorial mix?
It took a meeting with FHM’s sex columnist, ”Dear Michelle”, to unexpectedly answer my query. Although her looks might suggest that she is simply another Homegrown Honey, Dear Michelle is actually Michelle Matthews, Publishing Manager of Struik’s new women’s interest imprint, Oshun Books.
”I really feel as though I’m providing a useful service, especially with regards to informing on what’s ‘normal’ and, hopefully, convincing men to visit their urologists more often.” – Michelle Matthews, FHM’s sex columnist
”Initially we used questions (not answers) from the international editions to build momentum,” explains Matthews of her retrofitted agony column. ”I expected this to continue to some degree. So what has surprised me most is that I now receive two or three new questions a day. Maybe surprisingly, most of these are not about the act of sex, but about relationships and health.”
Already something of a celebrity amongst her constituents, Matthews says: ”I really feel as though I’m providing a useful service, especially with regards to informing on what’s ‘normal’ and, hopefully, convincing men to visit their urologists more often.”
Although Dear Michelle is only one page in the magazine, it does typify a core aspect of the FHM formula. Another is reader interactivity, which Cooper says has previously seen readers participate in voting for the annual FHM ”100 Sexiest Women in the World” competition. Tie-ins with the immensely tedious, if clearly popular, reality television programme The Block have also shown FHM to be adept at branding itself across media platforms.
Asked who the magazine regards as its chief competition, Cooper offered an unexpected reply: ”In terms of circulation, obviously Men’s Health, although we cater to very different markets.”
Also an imported franchise, the local edition of Men’s Health (circulation 89,045, ABC Jan – Jun 2004) draws on a recipe that has given rise to the world’s largest male magazine brand, this according to local publisher Touchline Media. The emphasis is clearly on well-being, or as Men’s Health prefer to articulate their five core editorial values, its all about health, fitness, sex, stress and nutrition. That this tack has proven popular with local men is evidenced in Blink, which itself includes a Health & Wellness section.
For someone whose youth was defined by the twin editorial peaks of Scope and Car, magazines about wellness necessarily strike me as alien. Unmanly. Clearly I hold to anachronistic beliefs. Or, to improvise on the graceful utterance of a puzzled lady visitor to Joe Theron’s Hustler offices recently, the days of ”sport en pomp” defining men’s magazines are long gone.