Esquire

I love magazines. I adore the fairy tale life as per Vogue, Elle, Bazaar; I love the thinking in the essays of Harpers, The New Yorker, all the usual suspects. I love Paris Vogue for its arty kink, beautiful enough to leave out on the coffee table without making you seem perverse. I don't love the edgy new 'zines that don't seem to have much writing in them, or pictures for that matter, just a lot of space and a graphic designer's ego-nourishing attempt at something interesting -- these magazines tend not to be around that long.

I have also loved men's magazines -- and I don't mean Playboy and Hustler but Esquire, GQ, Maxim, the others. I've liked that they tend to make the distinction between art and ad, so that unlike women's magazines, you won't see an advertisement for shampoo and then an article on how best to wash your hair. Men's magazines seem to assume a basic intelligence in their readers. My favourite of these is Esquire I think, for its coherence -- every single story is an aspect of "man at his best" -- and for the writing which is far less uniform and blandly flawless as what you find in, say, Vogue. Esquire is a collection of the writing of individuals. While the overall message and theme and focus is always consistent and clear, each story holds the voice of its writer. I suppose an analogy might be the choir - lots of individual voices, one complete whole. You will, though, find stories on topics pretty similar to how to wash your hair, but written with a wry "we know you don't really know how to do this" sensibility that somehow seems interesting and fun rather than offensive which is how a similar story in Glamour can come off. I learned new tricks on how to wash dishes in Esquire, for example. Key factor when washing fine china and crystal: line the sink with tea towels before filling with water, so there are softer edges should you clink.

In Esquire I learned also the chilling truth of the psyche of a serial philanderer. The story was called something like "I've had 3,000 affairs" or was it 30,000? and was a first-person look at someone who simply cannot connect with women or himself. He admitted he is plain as porridge to look at, a salesman, utterly unremarkable but for this feat of the seduction of women. He can smell their vulnerability, he comes in as the nice guy they'd never suspect was capable of what his does by habit at this point; his wife found out once and said more or less, well, let's not talk about that. It's hard to know who to feel sorry for in that instance: her for her marriage to a cad or him for being married to someone who couldn't care less about herself or him. Where else but Esquire, with its willingness to help a man be his best, would you see so searing and insightful a profile of a serial offender?

Because I have read all the Vogues and other favourite magazines already this month and because I was in an airport and because I haven't visited Esquire in a while I picked up the latest issue, which has a picture of Angelina Jolie on the cover. I like Angelina, I think she is one of the more interesting women in her circle and while the marriage of plain-jane Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt never made sense to me, the connection between the two gods, Angie and Brad, seemed perfectly like-attracts-like. So I have never borne her ill-will for homewrecking and hurting one of America's sweethearts.

The picture on the cover and inside is weird, Angie looks robotic and inhuman, not the super-human goddess she usually is.

Perhaps that is a sign that something is amiss with Esquire, or maybe I've grown out of it. This time the articles on "how to wake her" seemed cutesy to the point of gagging. (Waking her doesn't involve a quick, hard thrust but instead breakfast in bed with a rather complicated recipe for what, in the end, is scrambled eggs.) There is the cutesy story of a joke (lame) told by a beautiful woman. There is a cutesy story of Ten Things Men Should Know About Women by Tea Leone which is cute cute cute. And, far more confident and assured than most women are. So what we have here is a fantasy world and a fairy tale where men are a bit awe-shucks and women are all (and I mean all) gorgeous and sexy and confident. It is all about the cult of Me, Manly -- all so boy brat I left my issue behind in the seat pocket in front of me, where the card explaining the safety features of this aircraft also hides, unread.

That said -- the profile of Angelina Jolie is extraordinary. I can't tell you if she and Brad are still an item or not. I can tell you she is building a sustainable Millennium Village in Cambodia, building a soy milk factory, water system, roads and a school on her own dime. She is reading international law. She is working out UN policy on countries such as those her children come from. She is trying to ensure that every day, each of her children receives enough attention from her that they feel equal and confident. She's trying to make a difference, to fill an emptiness she feels by doing something for the world rather than shopping. Maybe she's a freak and crazy and all the other things they say about her. Maybe it takes someone crazy to save a village no one else cares about.

Esquire is irritatingly "I'm just a cute little boy and don't you love me" but I didn't read this about her in Vogue. I did learn where her trench coat comes from. That fact is a little shameful when you think about it. No wonder Hillary won't win the White House and women still struggle for power -- as a very culture we take it away from each other.