(DISCLAIMER: I think this is the proper forum for this thread. At first I thought ‘Cafe Society,’ but I think it’s really more of a MPSIMS thang. I’m sure I’ll be corrected if I’m wrong. )
I cannot seem to take my eyes off Vince Barone, Playgirl’s “Real Man of the Year” (September 2004)! His entire pictorial is very ‘is it getting warm in here?’ – especially the look on his face on page 37. Yowsa!! I’ve been subscribing for just over a year, and this is the first time I’ve had the urge to scan one of the pictures and/or put a bookmark in the magazine. You Minneapolis women are soooo lucky… {sigh}
I just did a Google on “Vince Barone.” The first hit is for a guy in the Toronto city government. I presume it is not the VB. Bet he gets a lot of calls.
Found his photo on a Male Modeling site (rules here prohibiting me linking to a porn site). (Go to the kristian site, wait for it to load, he is the first guy on the 24th row.)
Anyway, a nice looking young man, not as nice as some, but to each his own.
Let me check. Okay, this isn’t GQ, where I’m in trouble.
Al Franken had a segment where he talked to a right-wing guy who had been on the list of Playgirl’s sexiest something-or-other. Afterwards, he joked that most of Playgirl readers were gay men.
I think Playgirl’s finally copped to its large gay readership (they used to deny it heatedly) and the last estimate I saw claimed their readership was something like 40% gay men.
Their oldest model ever that they had an issue or two ago is openly gay.
And July’s centerfold? I had 'im, two weeks ago today.
Funny, I thought there would be at least one other Doper who gets the magazine, and who would have posted to agree/disagree with me. Perhaps I’m just the only one willing to admit it?
jk1245, it sooo doesn’t matter if the guy in the pictures is straight or gay. It doesn’t matter if he can spell his name, if he pulls the wings off butterflies, or if he hates black people. He just has to look ever-so-sexy in the photos, which Mr. Barone does quite nicely. Does anyone ever read the bio information about these guys, anyway? (Ok, so, I read the first few paragraphs…I had the irrational impulse to find out if there was a chance that he lived around here!) No need for defensiveness, though: real men beat magazine men every time.
There is absolutely no doubt that Playgirl has a significantly gay male readership. Hell, 90% of the ads are obviously targeted at gay men, as is some of the content. There is no such thing as porn targeted JUST at straight women – not good porn, anyway. (It doesn’t need a storyline or foreplay or ‘sensitivity’, dammit, just fewer lesbian scenes and better-looking men!)
Playgirl kind of sucks, anyway: the two columns are good, but everything else is hit-or-miss. I almost pitted it earlier this week, actually, but then I read the issue with Vince in it and became momentarily obsessed. I find lots of different kinds of men attractive, so I usually enjoy the pictorials in a general kind of way (though they seem to think that we enjoy seeing tiny mushroom caps), but there’s just something about this guy that really works for me.
I thought I could ‘share the joy,’ but, again, I seem to be the only subscriber in the room…
I’ve bought precisely one issue of Playgirl in my life. And it was all for the thrill of being old enough to buy it. A girlfriend of mine and I looked through the pages when we got home, with many squeals and giggles. But after about an hour, I discovered that I’m not really into looking at some stranger’s beans and franks. Plus, I prefer “regular” looking guys.
Truth be told, I enjoy the pics from Playboy over Playgirl. Woohoo! They really get some hotties for that mag! Oh, and the articles are great, too.
Well, not completely hairless, but you can’t tell that from the G-rated photos in the links. Thanks for posting 'em!
That’s for sure…LOL!
Heh, I remember doing that, too: I thought I was so grown-up, buying a Playgirl at the one bookstore/newsstand in town that sold such things…
IMHO it completely depends on the stranger.
For me, again, it depends on the guy. Sometimes the hottie knocks me out, but sometimes I don’t get what the other women are making such a fuss about when it’s that guy, over there, who’s making my heart race. There are plenty of “regular”-looking guys I’d do in a heartbeat, but I too rarely get to see them naked…
Ya know, that’s one of the things that bugs me about Playgirl: it’s like ‘porn lite’ or something. Instead of being like Playboy, which provides killer pictures AND a great magazine, Playgirl thinks it just needs to provide two decent columns and some good pictures. They can just fill the rest in with crap about how they think single straight women live, ads for gay men, and boring sex toys that they try to pass off as daring. And the previous issue’s erotica were all repeats from within the past year! They’ve temporarily redeemed themselves in my eyes with Vince’s pictorial, and you don’t see me cancelling my subscription, but the mag really can be a little ridiculous.
See, the home page of that site – warning: dirty pictures! Do NOT peek from work or if you’re under 18 or a fundamentalist etc. etc. – the home page is basically everything I don’t like about this stuff. It’s so contrived: “I’m standing around in my jeans, I’m swigging from this water bottle, just another break from work, except whoops! my wangdoodle’s hanging out.” The same with similar pictures that show women allegedly doing everyday things in a “sexy” way: “Here I am in my office, very serious as you can tell from the glasses I’m wearing, and yes I do always answer the phone stark naked with my legs spread on the desk.” It’s terribly unsexy, IMO. Give me some good old fashioned nekkid-in-the-bedroom pictures that don’t have the sexuality drained out of them, thankyewverymuch.
What? The guy? Yeah, he’s cute. I like the fact he’s not beefcaked up to the nth degree; I like a built guy, but not so built his physique says “horse steroids.”
)
I find lots of different kinds of men attractive, so I usually enjoy the pictorials in a general kind of way (though they seem to think that we enjoy seeing tiny mushroom caps), but there’s just something about this guy that really works for me.
