Vice, Wendy, and the Space Between Them

Once a month I make the trip to the newsagent and come back carrying more magazines than any reasonable person needs. This is the ritual. This month’s haul.

Front, the British lads magazine I buy mostly for the photography and tell myself is for the interviews, is doing its best Glee impression this issue—models Rosie and Natalie photographed in high-school uniforms, a transparent move I am not above appreciating. Beyond the inevitable there are festival previews and games coverage written by someone who appears to actually play games, which remains rarer than it should be.

NEON, the German magazine that holds intellectualism and listicles in uneasy but mostly successful alliance, devotes significant space to sixty-six kitchen tips and a piece on why long-term planning has stopped making sense—both of which feel appropriate for 2010. They also run something on feminism online, the debate about whether the internet is a useful or hostile space for it, which was still genuinely open then in a way it isn’t now.

And then there’s Vice, which I always pick up with a mild sense of impending regret. This issue goes deep on Chinese boybands, embeds with British football hooligans for reasons the magazine considers self-evident, and investigates—with characteristic commitment—the mythology of salami-faced men. I love it and it makes me feel slightly worse about myself, which is the correct relationship to have with Vice.

Elsewhere: a grunge special from Ilovefakemagazine that does exactly what it says, i-D running a home-is-where-the-heart-is issue that’s predictably beautiful, and Wendy—a German magazine aimed at horse-obsessed girls aged approximately nine—which I picked up, read in full, and can confirm contains both very happy horse photography and DIY picture frames for your most special friends. The contrast with Vice’s salami-face investigation is something I’m still sitting with.

Print is slow and heavy and occasionally absurd. I can’t stop buying it.