August 31, 2004
New Magazines for Black Men Proudly Redefine the Pinup
By LOLA OGUNNAIKEIn the pages of King, a bimonthly men's magazine for the rims, bling and sneakers set, one thing is prized more than a taut waistline and a pretty face, shapely legs or a perky bosom: a large behind.
"That's what our readers have come to expect from us," said Datwon Thomas, King's editor since it began publishing three years ago. "They want to see the thick girls, the girls with " Mr. Thomas, a 29-year-old married father of two, stammered here, searching for a description that would work in the pages of a family newspaper, "with, you know, a big backside."
On the surface, King, a spinoff of the popular hip-hop magazine XXL, owned by Harris Publications, appears to follow the same formula that lad mags like Maxim, FHM and Stuff have used to great success. Hot girl on the cover. More hot girls in various stages of undress on the inside. Fast cars, expensive gadgets, even the occasional article thrown in for good measure. The difference is one of audience.
King is the leader in a small but growing market of magazines that cater primarily to young African-American men. According to a report released this month by the Audit Bureau of Circulations for the six-month period ending on June 30, King's paid circulation grew by 52.2 percent, to 227,323. Other magazines in the category include BlackMen and Smooth.
"We've positioned ourselves to be the black Maxim," said Sean Cummings, Smooth's editor. Mr. Cummings said that his magazine, which is not audited by ABC, has also had double-digit gains this year, growing to a circulation of 150,000 from 80,000 in the last 12 months. BlackMen's circulation, according to ABC, grew to 103,000 from just over 80,000 in the same period. (Maxim, has a circulation of more than 2.5 million, up a tiny amount over last year.)
Their circulations may be small, but the relative success of King and the others has not come as a surprise to some publishing analysts.
"The magazine industry has largely ignored the young black male reader," said Reed Phillips, a partner in DeSilva & Phillips, a media investment banking company that specializes in the magazine industry. "Publishers think they pick them up with music magazines like The Source, XXL and Vibe, so as a result there has been a void."
But beyond the desire to tap into an underserved market, these magazines are also presenting an alternative image of beauty. And that, Mr. Cummings argues, is the great and somewhat subversive thing about them. "These books allow us to celebrate the beauty of our women without compromise," he said. "For years magazines like FHM, Maxim and Stuff have showed you their idea of beauty - a blond and blue-eyed 110-pound woman. Now we're showing you ours."
That may sound like a high-minded justification for running layouts of nearly naked women. Yet even if that is the case, there is no question that these nearly naked girls look decidedly different than the nearly naked girls one finds in large-circulation mainstream magazines. Few are white and none are model thin. "It's safe to say that our girls would probably not appear in the pages of Vogue," Mr. Thomas said, chuckling. "Anna Wintour would be like, 'Honey, stop with the cupcakes.' "
Mr. Cummings said the measurements of the quintessential Smooth girl would be approximately 36-24-38, he added.
Andy Clerkson, editorial director of Dennis Publishing, the company behind Maxim and Stuff, said his magazines did not have a type. Last year, he pointed out, 5 of the 12 women who appeared on the cover of Maxim were not white. "We're looking at female celebrities who reflect the national demographic, and if that's Beyoncé or Anna Kournikova or Lucy Liu, so be it," he said. Fame more than anything dictates his magazine's choices, he said.
Jayson Rodriguez, a 25-year-old graduate student at New York University, said he skipped over the mainstream lad magazines at newsstands and headed straight for King and Smooth. "I'm not interested in the Anna Kournikovas and Paris Hiltons of the world," Mr. Rodriguez said. But the magazines provide more than an opportunity to ogle women with hour (and a half) glass figures, he was quick to explain. The magazines' "irreverent humor" and unique take on the world at large attract him, too.
"When I read Esquire and GQ, I feel like I'm broke," he said. "When I read King and Smooth, they make me laugh. I can relate. It feels like I'm talking to my boys."
The girls who appear in the pages of King, like the ones featured in Smooth and BlackMen, are a mix of established celebrities, aspiring artists and actresses, and the eye candy that pops up in music videos and at music industry events. Past King covers have featured the rappers Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown, the R&B singer Mya and the supermodel Tyra Banks, a coup for the magazine that took nearly two years to negotiate. "We sent her flowers every year on her birthday," Mr. Thomas said. "When she finally agreed, it was incredible."
It is somewhat easier to obtain the services of the other models in the magazine. Scrolling through his photographic database of more than 250 hopefuls, Mr. Thomas, perched in his cramped corner office, said he received 80 to100 e-mail submissions a week, some from as far as Yugoslavia and Japan. Their messages are sweet; their photographs steamy: mocha-colored visions with come-hither grins pose topless on sandy shores; bottom-heavy brunettes frolic in the surf and blow bright red kisses at the camera.
A woman named Baraka, who called herself an aspiring model, wrote from Nashville to explain that, though married, she is "definitely willing to do a semi-provocative, sexy but classy shoot."
Historically magazines for black men have had difficulty staying afloat. Ebony Man folded, as did Code, a sleek glossy in the vein of GQ, published by Larry Flynt, the founder of Hustler. And attracting advertisers to Smooth has not been easy, Mr. Cummings said, asserting that a double standard was to blame.
"If you have a white girl in a bikini lounging on a chair, she's a beautiful girl next door," he said. "The minute you put a woman of color who's a Size 10 in the same setting, she's a whore. Mainstream America still fears black sexuality."
George Sansoucy, a senior vice president at Initiative, an international media services company, said its circulation had more to do with Smooth's advertising woes than with race. "Madison Avenue, in very large part, is driven by one color: green," Mr. Sansoucy said.
John Blassingame, publisher of BlackMen, also brushed off Mr. Cumming's theory. "It's not about race; it's about a magazine proving its stability to advertisers and saying, 'Hey, I'm going to be here for a while.' "
While a handful of girls are paid a nominal fee for their work in the magazines - $150 to $350 is the usual range - most appear for nothing more than the exposure. Mr. Cummings said directors of hip-hop videos now comb these men's magazines in search of dancers. And for the likes of Melyssa Ford (whose killer curves earned her the handle Jessica Rabbit), Gloria Velez and Ki Toy, already semicelebrities in the world of music video, appearing in these magazines may lead to more modeling work and movie offers.
But not all the women King has put on its cover have been, as Mr. Thomas puts it, thick. While seemingly perfect for the pages of a mainstream women's magazine, the R&B singer Brandy's relatively waiflike frame did not go over well with King readers when she appeared on the cover of the magazine's September issue.
"We've never gotten such a negative response before," Mr. Thomas said, shaking his head. "Our readers were like, 'What's up with the thinnie on the cover?' "
For her part Brandy seemed to understand what King's readers were looking for. "I think my booty could be bigger," she said in the interview that accompanied her photo layout. "Just a little more budonkadunk, and then I would be good."