Let's Look at MALE magazine,1958: WHEW
What the Old Guys Ruining the U.S. Prob Think Made America Great that Other Time
In honor of International Women’s Day, I’ve been thinking about the men’s magazines of the mid twentieth century that I used to see on news stands during my childhood. (I know Intl. Women’s Day was yesterday, but I wasn’t finished writing yesterday.)
My interest was sparked after I ran into the following illustration from the March 1958 issue of MALE magazine, (the ‘men’s adventure magazine’) on the internet somewhere. And lest you think MALE was some backwater publication, it had a circulation of a million copies a month.
Eager to find out who all The 10 Bad Girls were, I bought a copy of this issue on Ebay. (On the jpeg below, I cut/pasted a few of their descriptions for your interest and amusement.)

Of course, any assortment of problem women from the 1950’s or 60’s would be incomplete without a NYMPHOMANIAC. In those days, the two main categories of women found in men’s magazines were nymphomaniacs and their troubling counterparts: women who were said to be FRIGID.

And the reason I’ve been thinking about tropes from these mid twentieth century men’s magazines is because of the trending return to ‘good old fashioned masculinity’ that is currently being embraced by the continuously annoying and carelessly sadistic ‘powerful men’ in the current administration. (Do I have to name them? Please tell me I don’t. I know you know who I mean.)
Therefore, in honor of International Woman’s Day, I decided to take a closer look at the fast moving river of pop culture that was being directed toward these very men when America was great again that other time. The current President was 12 in 1958. He (and the men he admires) no doubt grew up sneaking off to look at magazines like MALE. There were a lot of versions of these ‘men’s magazines’ and they had names like For Men Only, Man’s World, Action for Men, True Action, Swank, Argosy, etc. In my opinion, there is no more direct pop cultural thru-line to that famous “Grab ‘em by the pussy” remark than the common content of these For Men Only magazines.
So come with me now on a little journey back to those idyllic days of March 1958, the month Elvis was drafted into the army. According to Wikipedia, the USSR was doing A LOT of above ground nuclear testing that year. But so what? This was, after all, a time when the U.S. military accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb on Mars Bluff, South Carolina and no one in media made a very big deal out of it. (Seriously, reader. Click that link and behold.)
Back in those halcyon days, before the dreaded DEI was even a gleam in anyone’s eye, the top 20 TV shows included The Riflemen. Bat Masterson. Sea Hunt. Naked City. Peter Gunn. The Texan and Bronco. Except for “The Donna Reed Show”, almost every show on that list was all about and also starring MEN, MEN and MORE MEN. So here was a magazine especially tailored to those restless young MALES who, having survived a world war, now found themselves dropped into the domestic sphere not unlike the way Dorothy caromed into the land of Oz. But they had no yellow brick road to lead them into a functioning, productive next chapter. Meanwhile, their heads were still full of images like this:
The readers of these magazines were not men interested in pursuing their “calling.” They were not readying themselves for “a career.” These men who identified with this guy.
And I guess quite a few of them were feeling a little out of sorts. How else to explain the amount of ads for something called PILES. Not to mention OLD LEG SORES!
WHO were all these un-tethered young men supposed to turn to for advice about what should be their next move post battlefield? Small wonder that this was the first page of the March 1958 issue of MALE:

Realistically, how many unemployed veterans, bursting with adrenaline, were going to be able to cope with a life of sitting behind a desk, adding numbers, 8 hours a day five days a week? Which is why THE ENTIRE REST of the advertisements in MALE magazine, of which there were many, offered a plethora of seemingly easy solutions.

Clearly opportunities for easy money were EVERYWHERE if you just OPENED YOUR EYES and took the initiative.
Hey! Here’s one you didn’t think of… but SHOULD HAVE!
Or…how about MEAT CUTTING? Why didn’t this occur to you before? Come on! It’s “The Best Established Business in the World.” because, like the ad says, “PEOPLE MUST EAT!”

According to MALE MAGAZINE, literally everywhere a man looked, he could not fail to see a fantastic opportunity for earning big money.

A lot of these new WWII vets were only in their early twenties. So, then as now, the words “GET INTO TELEVISION” probably sparked some interest.

Then again, to hell with accounting and assembling a refrigerator from scratch. How does“The THRILL OF BRINGING A CROOK TO JUSTICE!” sound? It’s a real job that you can definitely have if you just take this first step!

Or you know what also really sounds like TREMENDOUS PROFITS waiting to happen?

Back when America was great again that other time, even a career in ART was easy- peasy.
Which goes a long way toward explaining the art in this issue of MALE magazine. Just have a look at these TWO illustrations for TWO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT stories in the March 1958 issue of MALE magazine!
The point is that all things were clearly possible for the male readership of ‘MALE’ in 1958. Including FAME and FORTUNE!!!

So many booklets to send for! So many possibilities!
And if you are now wondering “Did anyone take this ridiculous template for success seriously? They must have all sensed they were probably looking at scams, right?” may I remind you of this:
And now that we understand a little bit more about the interests and goals of the readership of MALE magazine, we come to my central question on this The International Day of the Woman: What was the magazine’s relationship to women? Even back in 1958. they were 50% of the population.
Well, the ladies definitely play a big featured role in the articles that are published between the ads. Naturally, all the stories star a white male adventurer of sorts, searching for or escaping from something dire. Frequently they are forced to cope with a voluptuous woman whose intentions seem kind of suspect.
In the interest of writing this piece, of course I read one of these “adventure articles.” The following description of a fun rape is the point at which I decided to stop.
Yikes.
Happy International Women’s Day.
Remember to take your vitamins and go to the gym. If this stuff is what they are trying to bring back, we have our work cut out for us. Again.
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Merrill, thank you for your service.
This whole piece is brilliant. Staggering. Timely. True.
Besides absurd, I see more postwar PTSD - anxiety if you didn't serve, piles if you did, worrying that you're being left behind in the new postwar boom, anxiety and confusion about sexuality, making sense of the worldwide sadomasochistic cataclysm that so recently claimed 80 million lives, rampant consumerism so you didn't have to think about it.
What makes it horrible now is the boomer in chief is stuck back there, in the same stupid loop, destroying the postwar alliances to reassert the old anxieties.