First off, while I will admit that there are times I wonder whether Maxim or FHM are in good taste, I don’t classify them as ‘fetish’ magazines. Or at least no more so than such special interest magazines as Sports Illustrated (with its annual swimsuit issue, it certainly comes close to being at least as racy as anything mentioned here that does not show nipplage.)
As for your concern about professionalism - I don’t see where it’s a problem. Frankly, if I had a work related mailbox, I’d be using that instead of the one at my address, because I’ve had problems with some neanderthal stealing my mail. That’s just one relatively innocent reason for such an arrangement, to my mind.
If the magazine is being paid for by the city, that would be something else. But simply using the address to recieve non-work related materials? Tempest in teapot.
To put things a different way: As long as Joe Firefighter isn’t violating a specific policy, there’s no reason he can’t use his city-provided email account for general communication with friends, relatives, or even complete strangers. If it affects his ability to the work he’s supposed to be doing, then and only then does it become an issue.
If the recipients are reading the magazines at work when they should be working, that’s between them and their supervisor.
If the safety officers had naked pin-ups on their walls or stacks of porn on their desks that could potentially constitute sexual harassment. But I think it’s highly unlikely that the mere presence of an unopened magazine (a magazine with bikini shots, not nude shots) in someone’s mailbox would rise to the level of something worth suing over.
Are these mailboxes where the public has access to them? Having private mail out in areas where there’s public traffic is asking for trouble no matter what that mail is.
Personally I think you should mind your own business and stop looking people’s private mail … .
Forget Maxim and FHM: has the OP never seen the bare-chested male models and actor hunks and beefcake poses in Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and Us?
I work at a doctor’s office. We get for-women-only magazine crap by the metric ton, about shopping and fashion and shoes and relationships and sex — with beefcake thrown in for good measure. But inevitably when one, one racy issue of Sports Illustrated comes out per year, all the girls in the office have to gather around and cluck their tongues in a superior way.
The only difference is, Maxim and FHM have it on the cover instead of hidden tastefully inside.
I just comb through the magazines and extract the little subscription cards before we put the mags in the lobby. Those little cards fall out and get all over the floor.
We subscribe to such edifying magazines as
Time
Home and Garden
Country Home
Country Life
Garden Life and Country
Gourmet
Gourmet Garden Home
Home Life
Gourmet Country Time
and
People
How is Maxim disrespectful? What, precisely, is inappropriate about it? We get that you don’t approve. That was clear in the OP. What’s not clear is why you don’t approve.
If you’re going to keep using the word “fetish,” it would behoove you to actually understand what it means. Clinically, a fetish is a particular fixation that a person requires be present for them to achieve sexual satisfaction. In common parlance, a fetish is any interest in an unusual or non-mainstream sexual act. A fetish magazine would feature people wearing ball gags, or getting whipped, or just close-ups of women’s feet.
This does not describe Maxim in the slightest. It’s absolutely not a fetish magazine. The images contained there in are solidly mainstream: shapely women in revealing outfits. This is not a fetish. This is about as vanilla a sexual interest as you can find in a heterosexual man. It’s not even porn. Maxim does not feature explicit nudity. The models inside are wearing clothing: usually underwear or lingerie, but all the “naughty bits” are completely covered. Ocasionally, the model will be nude, but photographed in such a way that you can’t actually see anything. Only by the most rigid and reactionary standards could this be described as “pornographic.”
And this makes a difference because…
I’d be perfectly willing to give it a shot, but since nothing you’ve described gives any indication that this is actually happening, it seems a bit of a waste of time. Maxim is not pornographic, “soft” or otherwise. It’s just a magazine with pretty women and stupid articles.
It’s not quite what I’d call lily white, either, though. When it first started publishing in the early 90s one of the guys on my ship got a ‘gift’ subscription (Which were given out to boost their circulation numbers, so they could justify their ad rates.) and it was passed around, much like the Victoria’s Secrets catalog. (Though I want it noted, clearly, that the VS catalogs were much preferred to Maxim: Better poses, more variety, and less inane verbiage.) One of the first issues that came included a state-by-state survey of the age of consent for all 50 states. :eek:
Well since everyone wants to fuck a firemean but rarely wants to live with his work schedule they often end up with a string of ex-wives, making the fire station the most stable address they have.
Yah, it’s kind of a frat-boy fantasy mag, but aimed at high school guys. I haven’t glanced at a Maxim in ages, but even a couple years ago they were filled with tips on tricking your girlfriend into anal sex, or threesomes, or videotaping your encounters, or how to juggle several girlfriends. But I’ve never seen someone who actually had a girlfriend reading the mags - guys in high school would buy it and drool over the scantily clad chicks and giggle over the jokes and talk about the sex tips that none of them were in a position to use.
Plus, one of them just named Eva Longoria the sexiest woman. Eva frickin’ Longoria? Sexier than Angelina Jolie or Jessica Alba? Bullshit! Eva is like Jennifer Lopez. She always looks so done up that I can’t imagine her having sex without a hair and makeup person standing by to make sure nothing smudges.
I know a married woman who reads it when she can get her hands on it. She says it’s better to read a poll of men, written by men, about what men want. Some of the other magazine polls are women polling other women; or occasional anecdotes about what women think their men want; or a nicely cherry-picked range of men’s opinions that make the women readers happy but don’t tell her anything.
She liked the issue of Maxim showing how to install your own stripper pole, even.
One important point is that a fire department is not a workplace in the way that the treasury office, DMV, or the zoning departments are. Fire fighters don’t arrive at the station, sit down at their desk and put out fires from 9 to 5 before going home. The fire station is basically a dormitory / training space / equipment storehouse where the FF’s have to sit and wait until their services are needed. In some cases, they eat, sleep and live there for days at a time. Should they be allowed to read magazines while they’re waiting for an alarm to ring? Hell yes.
Tell me, if they only get called to put out one fire in a week, do you similarly berate them for not working as hard as the treasury office?
Make no mistake, if you let some guy waiting around at the fire station look at a girl in a bikini, the next thing you know it’ll be compulsory to tape photographs of anal underage goat sex to the inside of our glasses.
That’s a disturbing image, but not as disturbing as the revelation that Brisbane has found it necessary to establish an age of consent for goats.
As to the OP: chela, I sympathize. If a bunch of twelve-year-olds ever get elected to the city council, you’ll have to trot out your best “think of the children!” wail, and no one wants that. But your language, calling Maxim “fetish porn” and women who pose for it “nekkid lousy hags,” hints at a lack of detachment that may be clouding your thinking. For example, there is no reason that what’s good for the fire department has to be good for everyone.
I offer a solution: throw yourself assiduously into your work. You may be able to forget about the violation of your sense of propriety, first for seconds, then whole minutes at a time, as you shift your concentration to job-related tasks.
Of course, that won’t work if your job is to monitor everyone’s magazine subscriptions: in that event, do you think you could find out why assistant chief Jones hasn’t been getting his issues of The Advocate?
Bitching about it on a message board solves nothing, does it?
To really get this issue going forward, get an attorney and file a sexual harassment lawsuit against the city. “Forcible exposure to the objectification of women in the work environment” and all that.
They may start a no-city-hall-delivery policy, just to prevent any future lawsuits. Or you may get lucky and cash in. That’ll show them.