Apparently, a last year Maxim published a list of the “World’s most unsexy women”, or something like that, and the list included Sarah Jessica Parker. Now, Maxim decided recently to name her the unexpected crush o’ the month, or something. So afterellen publishes an article about the sillyness of the whole situation.
And so, the great AE vs. Maxim throwdown continues. I suppose Maxim doesn’t really care, and in the end AE is just talking to people who agree with them anyway. But hey, I don’t mind. The AE hot 100 list came out of the shouting match, and it rocks, so the whole thing is cool, I guess.
Here’s the problem, though. Everybody always acts like Maxim (and other similar publications) is somehow written by sexist pigs that go out of their way to ridicule women and promote impossible standards of beauty. I don’t believe it is that simple.
The article above compares Maxim to Perez Hilton. Now in my opinion, Perez is a loser. He apparently like to spew garbage just for the fun of it. But I’m pretty sure that it is just him. The writing process for Perez Hilton’s blog consists of:
- Hear gossip
- Exaggerate
- Post to blog
- Laugh at ruined reputation, etc. and repeat.
Maxim is different. Sure, the writers might come up with ideas in a similar way, but then each idea passes through a whole system of editors, marketers, and executives with the simple goal to try and sell more magazines. The month they printed that SJP was the least unsexy woman, somebody said, “Hey guys, marketing says we need more controversy is this issue! It’s too boring the way it is.”
At least that’s my guess. I’ve never worked at Maxim, of course, so I don’t know for sure, but I’m willing to bet that everything that Maxim prints is a calculated decision to sell more ads and magazines. It’s just not a bunch of fat, angry guys who hate women sitting around talking trash. Rather, it is a corporation cashing in on the existing sexist culture.