To Timberlake, or not to Timberlake? The Debate

Get six top magazine editors together at a table and you can count on the buzzwords flying. Here are a few of the ones tossed out at last night's panel discussion on the differences between men's and women's magazines: "curate," "relatable," "fragmentation," "essayistically," "DNA," "narratives," passionate," "megabrands." (That last one not to be confused with "Magabrands," of course.)

Held by Mediabistro, the event was officially titled "Skirts, Slacks and Supper," but one wag dubbed it "Bros and Hos." Representing the bros were Christopher Napolitano of Playboy, Dan Peres of Details and James Kaminsky of Maxim, while the, um, women consisted of Glamour's Cindi Leive, Marie Claire's Joanna Coles and Elle's Alexandra Postman.

In the midst of all the marketing language, a genuinely unscripted moment occurred when Napolitano was asked about the role of celebrities in selling magazines. His answer:

Esquire gets to put George Clooney on the cover like every other month, six times a year. And I'm happy for them!... But the fact of the matter is they're not making [celebrities] like they used to. When you're reaching for, shit, Justin Timberlake as your ideal of a men's celebrity, somebody that's going to relate to your readers....We're always like, who the hell are we going to do this month? Bruce Willis was the first person to do three Playboy interviews. We didn't even realize it when it was happening. This is off the record, right?

The question was then put to Peres, who said, "Well, first of all, in the interest of full disclosure, we've put Justin Timberlake on our cover, several times."

Peres also seemed to be hinting at something when he said, in an earlier exchange, "The reality is that of the men's magazines, not just those represented here but across the board, Details is the one that...draws a lot of inspiration from women's magazines, and certainly our readership probably appreciates that."

Later, Peres went further down this path, saying, "I'd love to edit a women's magazine....I think it'd be fun. Which title? I don't know, I'm kind of waiting for Cindi to fuck it all up at Glamour." (That got a big laugh, especially from Leive.)

Inevitably, talk turned to Vanity Fair's parental-outrage-baiting Miley Cyrus photo shoot.

Kaminsky:

It's a manufactured controversy somewhat. They went out of their way to sexualize a 15-year-old girl, who's in a Disney show where, unlike most 15-year-old girls in kid shows, is not sexual at all. It was a pretty tame photo, and I think everyone knew what they were doing, and I'm not sure anyone was all that upset, and it sold a lot of copies of the Post, and it's going to sell a lot of copies of Vanity Fair.

Leive agreed:

I think it's a bit hypocritical how up in arms everybody is about it because clearly girls are sexualized far too early in this culture all the time, so we look at that one, I agree, relatively tame picture and we're suddenly so shocked, shocked! It seems a little disingenuous.