GQ Ran Out of Clothes for Its Woman of the Year

Oh, dude magazines. What’ll you think of next? (Just…same stuff? The usual? Sex and ties? Okay.) British GQ currently has five different “Men of the Year” covers in circulation, and New Statesman did a quick rundown, instructing readers to “See if you can spot the odd one out.”

True fact: It took me like ten minutes to figure out which cover didn’t fit. At first I was like, “Is it…the black guy? Are they excited because there’s a black guy?” But no, that wouldn’t make any sense—pretty sure we’ve been allowing black people on magazine covers for at least a couple of years now (not long enough, but, you know, a little while). So then it was, “Are they…confused by the fact that one of the men of the year is a woman?” But that’s kind of the point! It’s a kicky little joke! Not worth a blog post.

And then finally I was like “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! It’s because THE WOMAN IS THE ONLY ONE WHO IS NAKED.”

That’s how accustomed I am to women just being naked by default. I’m so used to it, I don’t even notice anymore! Of course the woman is naked—the woman is always naked. Haaaaay, internalized sexism—LYLAS!

To be completely honest, I used to write for GQ (naked lady profiles, even!) and everyone there was great. And objectification is complicated—I don’t have a problem with a naked lady here and there per se, but when ALL YOUR LADIES ARE NAKED, those of us ladies with clothes on start to wonder why you even keep us around. Like, you’re just going to have one lady…and she has to be naked? You’re not even a naked lady magazine! This isn’t Petulant Brooklyn Crotch Quarterly (tagline: “Sure, I’ll Masturbate. Whatever.”). Sigh. Barf.