Men's Time, August 2008

"White-collar health crisis," reads the big headline on the cover of Men's Time magazine (熟男志). Other coverlines:

• Which is more important: work or health?
• Playboys can be good boys, too
• Two successive wives have made me a professional cuckold
• Men at age 30

The box at the bottom left reads "freely distributed popular science reading material."

All of this for free? There's a reason for that: the magazine's actually an ad pamphlet for the Tongji Male Hospital of Beijing.

The articles all seem to be drawn from various places online, but Men's Time (issue #0001) deftly deflects criticism of its copyright status:

Copyright Notice
This is an internal publication; all articles are freely selected and are not used for any commercial purpose. Image and text copyrights belong to their respective authors.

Those authors aren't mentioned anywhere, however.

Men's Time, January 2008

So Johnny Depp shouldn't be upset that he's being used in this issue to illustrate an article on sexual fatigue in thirty-something men. And in an electronic edition released in January (which also claims to be issue #1), Orlando Bloom leaves Gotham magazine to smoulder on the cover of Time. Does being a real man have something to do with pirates?

It's not that the information isn't useful: there's an article on death by overwork that cites statistics to urge white-collars to leave the office and relax at home with their families. And there are a couple of funny pieces interspersed among all of the stress, impotence, and STDs. But the intent is clearly to convince men with money that they need get their equipment checked out with a professional. A "normal" man is one who gets 100% on a score-yourself survey about sexual satisfaction; everyone else would do well to visit a doctor.

But how can any of the information be trusted when none of it is attributed?

20th Century Tongji

A Q&A column at the back dispenses health and relationship advice, but all of the questions and answers can be found verbatim online, spread across China's Internet forums. Would you trust a group of nameless, faceless BBSers to tell you whether you should have an affair with a younger woman?

Still, this kind of random repurposing can be entertaining: the hospital's website borrows the 20th Century Fox movie logo for use in its promotional Flash video. Men's health: now more glamorous than ever.