The Editors
There are no lifestyle magazines for men anymore.
There are magazines about firearms and sports and the outdoors. There are specialty rags about business and entrepreneurship and cigars and booze. There are magazines and web sites that tell men how to lift weights and how to pick up girls.
These publications cover the “whats” and the “how-tos” of specific pursuits — of things that men do and things that men enjoy — but they aren’t about being a man or living life as a man in the 21st Century.
The established men’s style magazines have all become fashionably allergic to masculinity itself, and seem to exist only to troll men. They dress men up in women’s clothing and preach the Hollywood gospel of radical feminism and far-left politics.
Many of the writers are women, and if the majority of normal, healthy, successful men were to flip through an issue at an airport, one imagines them wondering what kind of man these magazines are even printed to please.
The fashion and lifestyles presented in them are more alien than aspirational. How many men really want to be that guy in the skirt or Prada spread? Modern men’s lifestyle magazines are selling lives and styles that very few men are living or buying.
We know that there are millions of bright, ambitious men who love being men without apology.
Men who are tired of being lectured by an insulated and out-of-touch group of “progressive” urban hipsters.
We know that there are millions of men who don’t hate women — in fact, they love women — but they aren’t interested in learning how to dress or behave more like women.
We know that there are millions of men who want to become the best men they can be in every way.
These men want to read about and learn from and be inspired by other successful men.
We know these men are out there because they are listening to hundreds of thousands of hours of podcasts and watching millions of videos made by men, for men, about being men. They’re listening to Ryan Michler’s Order of Man and watching John Lovell’s Warrior Poet Society network. They’re doing Andy Frisella’s “75 Hard” and reading Jordan Peterson and learning about leadership from Jocko Willink.
These men didn’t stop caring about being men — they stopped caring (or never cared) about men’s magazines because those magazines have nothing to offer them that they actually want.
So we see them out there every day watching videos and listening to podcasts and learning how to be better men, and that’s great.
The downside is that there’s almost no written record of this rising masculine counterculture.
So, when one looks to see what has been written about any of these men or their books or the men’s movement in general, only critical or opposing views are available. Any material that is critical of men and masculinity will receive countless fawning reviews. There is almost no mainstream “paper of record” where one could send a new book advocating positive masculinity where it would be sympathetically received. No one will interview and celebrate inspiring and formidable men, unless those men genuflect theatrically to the prevailing narrative that being a man doesn’t matter — or even that women are “better” than men.
We’re determined to change that.
After being disgusted by what passes for a “men’s magazine” for years, we sat down to talk about the idea of creating one. We talked about what we want to do, and what we don’t want to do.
There are plenty of political web sites out there, and we don’t want to write a specifically political magazine.
No one can fairly blame the average woman for the state of men and masculinity, and we don’t want to denigrate women or write about the latest radical feminist “outrage” in a reactionary way.
We want to publish a magazine for men that is pro-masculinity, but not specifically “anti” anything. We want to produce culture, not merely rhetoric.
We want to write about art and music and film and history and travel from an unapologetically masculine perspective.
We want to cover masculine style and show men how to wear clothing that is consistent with who they aspire to become, not what some “fashionista” in New York City who has totally different values wants.
We want to interview and feature men who demonstrate masculine excellence and talk about their motivations and their thoughts and their lifestyles. We want to hear what they are reading and watching and what they are working on and whose work influenced them. We want to know what inspires great men, so that we can inspire other men to be great — or at least better.
We want to produce a magazine that is everything that 21st Century men’s magazines should be — but aren’t.
The name of this magazine is CHEST, inspired by that quote from C.S. Lewis:
“We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
This is a magazine for men with chests.
Our initial goal is to launch a web site and gather the best material into a printed journal after one year. However, there is the potential to do so much more and make a much greater impact on masculine culture around the world.
So, if you’re a man who is interested in getting involved in some way or in making a contribution or an investment in CHEST, we may be interested in hearing from you.
— The Editors
