Profitable Peek for Men’s Magazines

I was surprised to read that there is a dearth of men’s magazines (“Looking for Mr. Right,” Nov. 28). Each time I go into a liquor store to buy something as innocent as a pack of bubble gum, I am ambushed by the proliferation of “adult” magazines spouting out of a rack behind the counter. Are these not men’s magazines?

Playboy magazine columnist Asa Baber claims that books, movies, television shows and magazines have all profited from the culture’s representation of women. I entreat him to review the representation of women in the media.

Baber asserts that Playboy is some intrepid maverick steadfastly refusing to subordinate itself to feminism, and yet its portrayal of women concurs with what organized religion has promulgated for centuries: Women are objects. And as objects removed from the sphere of humanity, they are prey to the rampant rape, wife beating and serial slaughter that occurs in this society.

The men featured in this article suggest that women are responsible in some way for the deficiency of men’s magazines, as if the emergence of a salient female identity has engendered an amorphous male identity.

Often confusion is indicative of open-mindedness. Maybe this male identity crisis presages the onset of maturity.

VERONICA DODERLEIN

Canoga Park