Complex (August-September 2004)

If Complex weighs a pound, 12 ounces of it is aggressive advertising. By aggressive, I mean either garish, disturbing, or extremely sexy. My first reaction to this "hip, urban style magazine for men" while flipping through it was to recoil in shock at an ad for Axe Deodorant that featured a woman snuggling with some sort of creature that I first thought was supposed to be a hairy vagina with short comical legs … which would have been far less disturbing than what I soon realized it actually was: a man's hairy, but clean, dry, and (based on the expression of the model caressing it) intoxicatingly aromatic armpit. With short comical legs.

There were several other ads featuring scantily-clad women, and some FHM-esque fashion layouts, which could only just balance out the ick factor of the Axe ads (of which there were two in the bizarre "armpit series"). I don't think that armpit-man image will ever unwrap itself from my synapses. Some images cannot be unseen. And it won't sell me any Axe deodorant sticks, that's for sure. While some advertisers assume any sliver of available brainspace is worth the price, in this case I will always and forever associate "the Axe effect" with "the gag reflex."

Beyond ads, there's lots of reviews and pictures of gangsta products and brief interviewlets with celebrities and musical acts, focusing on current projects and personal style (Zach Braff and Franz Ferdinand sandwiched among soccer stars and rappers). There's a guide to scoring a threesome with adventurous women, and a tongue-in-cheek illustration on how to set up a kickass home Wi-Fi system (done in that 8-bit computer style, depicting a bedroom scene in which a be-thonged black woman lays astride a be-boxered white male).

Overall it was difficult to draw much from the magazine, as I am decidedly not the target audience, not being hip, urban, or according to my wife, much of a man. Though I could certainly appreciate its finer points, including: capsule reviews of fancy new tennis shoes (I believe these days they're called "fly kicks"), a style guide to expensive blue jeans, and the fact that you can't turn more than three pages without some scantily clad ho demurely trying to cover just her nipples.

In terms of layout, Complex is such a confused post-MTV jumble that it was often hard to tell there were actually words, as the pages were so jammed with multiple boxes, arrows, illustrations, overlapping images, giant headlines and subheads, etc. I really just flipped through it out of sheer curiosity, and a few moments were enough to make me slightly loco en la cabeza.Plus, it's one of those flip-flop designs, so there's two covers (one white-targeted, one black-targeted), and halfway through the magazine it flips over. Xtremely irritating … but hip hop craaaazy!

I found myself fantasizing about buying a white jogging suit, growing a pencil-thin beard along my jawline, pimping out my '96 Prizm and surrounding myself with hip-hop honeys. Then my wife called and her '88 Accord needed some maintenance, and my boss was waiting on some fax I'd forgotten to send, and I realized it's tough to be beautifully awesome when most of life is so beautifully mundane. Who needs the lifestyle when you've actually got a life?

Which brings me to the point that magazines like Complex serve up the illusion that the loser buying it has a shot at the existence depicted in its pages. Maybe once in a great while, under certain circumstances, the reader might approach the sweet style he craves. But Complex says it's possible to do it all the time, if only you'd buy all this expensive crap. My friend, it's a lie. The closest you'll ever come to P. Diddy is buying one of his CD records with your overextended credit card.

Thus, magazines such as this are best acquired for free, as I did, and skimmed during idle moments in a permissive work environment … or purchased for an exceptionally messy bachelor's apartment just so visitors don't think all the dude reads is Maxim, Hustler, and The Nation.

Review by Crimedog