Maxim Cum Laude

In the jumble of sophomoric humor and wet dreams waiting to happen that is Maxim magazine, Vicki Chou ’02 sees something more. Sitting in her creatively disordered Quincy bedroom surrounded by more than 50 issues of the men’s magazine, Chou still becomes visibly giddy when discussing her 103-page social studies thesis about the millennial cultural touchstone.

“Maxim is louder, noisier and more in-your-face than previous men’s magazines,” she says. “It presents a uniquely American view of masculinity.” In her thesis, Chou argues that Maxim is “a reaction to a masculinity crisis in the second half of the 20th century.”

According to Chou’s research, men have been searching for a new role since the collapse of the “man as breadwinner” model in the ’60s. The Maxim Man, she argues, has filled the void: He is the definition of ’90s masculinity. He likes “Sex Sports Beer Gadgets Clothes Fitness”—the words boldly emblazoned, white on black, across the cover of every single issue of Maxim (though Chou notes that the French version gives higher billing to clothes and omits beer altogether).

Chou argues that straight white men, forced into the cultural shadows by the late 20th-century obsession with diversity, are finally able to reassert their identities by reading Maxim and watching programs like Comedy Central’s “The Man Show.” “They can overthrow political correctness and politeness and be proud of being a man again,” she says. But some Maxim readers disagree, arguing that there is nothing new going on here. “Man has always been about looking at hot chicks and power tools,” says Greg W. Santoni ’04. “It’s the American way.”

Chou was initially planning to write her thesis about education, but decided to spice up her topic a bit when she came to the startling realization that the process of writing it would consume a year of her life. She originally chose her thesis adviser, Lecturer on Social Studies Lisa M. Stulberg, for her expertise in education, but it was Stulberg’s work on bodybuilding magazines that turned out to be most helpful to Chou when the senior decided to write about gender issues. Chou originally considered writing about women’s magazines, but given the plethora of studies already done on their objectification of women, she turned to publications aimed at the less-fair sex. Chou chose Maxim because of its unprecedented success—it grew its readership from half a million to two million in 18 months. She calls Maxim “the male Cosmo,” though she says that “Maxim is better for men than Cosmo is for women.” In Chou’s opinion, Cosmopolitan presents an ideal of femininity that is almost impossible to achieve, while Maxim is content to let boys be boys.

Because of the easily accessible nature of her thesis topic, Chou says that “everyone had opinions and advice.” Even after handing in her Maxim opus, she still enjoys perusing the stacks of friends’ Maxims she has piled up on her bedroom floor. Upon spotting an article detailing the intricacies of dumping a dead body, she says, “You never know what they’re going to come up with next.”