Borak: Growing pains

It's seldom with generous grace that a writer turns a year older without letting the whole world (or the imaginary readership in the writer's mind) know about it. In turning 28 this month, I've resigned myself to the fact that I can't do the same things as I did in five years ago, which includes getting pissed out of my head for no occassion. As much as I hate it, I'm becoming a late 20-something cliché, where life is filled with married friends who buy Multiplas, good parking space comes before good food, and “Bros before Hos” makes less sense now than it did back then.

As I mourn the fleeting of my youth, I mourn too the slow agonising death of the lad's mag. Once, a job with a mag like FHM would've been every guy's dream gig, but now it almost passes off as a dirty word. Three years ago when I worked for the local version, I'd get these envious glares from men earning twice as much as I was, and right they were to give me that look. I had to fend off 50 other applicants for the writer's job, and it was easily the proudest moment of my short writing career.

Not so now—the lads' mag market is tumbling down, editors are leaving, and no one is gagging to join one anytime soon. Maxim, Arena, Loaded, and FHM are dropping drastic numbers; circulation figures for Maxim, for one, fell down 35%. It's a sign that the lads are growing up, and tit-counts don't matter as much as they used to. Men used to be predictable back in the day—barely-there clothing, celebrity sex-talk, and boozing advice used to be enough.

“The thing about the younger ones is that they aren't picking it up,” a fellow journo told me over lunch, which we spent figuring out what's wrong with the formula—after all, when lad's grow up, it's only logical to think that their younger counterparts would fill the void. But the new lads are a picky bunch; they're a lot more cynical when it comes to magazines. Thanks to the Internet, magazines are no longer the primary source of gossip and celebrity sleaze they were before. And nudity, once such a premium, is now bandied about the web for free, without spam or those annoying black strips.

"I feel like there is nothing for me,” said James Brown, the granddady of the lads' mag era who started Loaded in the early '90s. I couldn't have summed it up better. I get tired of seeing the same celebrities, the same quotes, the same stories rehashed again… and again. This applies more so for the Malaysian men's magazines. Ever since Ning Baizura's “explosive” interview (kinda tame, to be honest), our celebrities are hardly interesting—no one talks about anything controversial, it's all just timid flirting about underwear and romantic fantasies. And the fuss over Ashraf Sinclair's kiss on the beach just reveals the levels of moral paranoia we've sunken to. In such a ridiculously pious atmosphere, it's amazing how Malaysian men's magazines are still around.

If the web isn't reason enough, men too have changed in the years since. Back in the early days of Loaded, a lad's life was all about living vicariously, dating pretty young things and getting pissed as much as possible. It was about defying the norms of the typical family man, a movement headed by George Best whose words defined the “live fast, die young” generation: “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.”

But these are sobering times we live in, and the mortal decline of George Best from years of alcohol abuse showed us the consequence of living that life, and it's just not pretty. This isn't to say that men have stopped wanting to date a gorgeous young thing; it's just that now we can see that dating an 18-year-old doesn't come without risking some queasiness—those who've overheard the trouble of someone explaining the significance of The A-Team and Iron Maiden to their date will understand what I'm harping on about.

The life that the lads' mags once preached isn't the life that's worth chasing anymore. In growing older, it's inevitable that we all fall into cliches of wanting the steady life, an MPV, comfortable shoes, and parking spots in front of restaurants. It's a resignation of our rebellious side, no doubt, but it's also a resignation to wanting the finer things in life, not waking up at 12 noon to a massive hangover and half-drunk beer cans. Magazines need to grow up, sober up, and leave the lad-isms to the web.

John Lim still strongly believes that print media still does have a place in this age of New Media. Mainly because he still has dial-up connection at home.