• "She holds out her right arm to show me her tattoo of Marilyn Monroe. All that remains of Marilyn is a few drops of black against skin that is the color the moon possesses in the thin air of northern winters."—Stephen Marche on Megan Fox, Esquire, February 2013.

• "Her skin is lined and slightly worn and depends on light from other sources—from her eyes, from her smile, even from the hounding incandescence of television."—Tom Junod on Hillary Clinton, Esquire, February 2008.

• "I can't help but notice her skin. It's the smoothest skin I've seen outside of a Clinique ad."—A.J. Jaocbs on Rosario Dawson, Esquire, [...]

Part of a series about youth.

When you turn twenty-seven you start noticing the number, everywhere. Suddenly everyone else is twenty-seven, too: Every athlete and actor, all of the dead people who ever did anything. Your age is everywhere because you, at twenty-seven, are perfect. Just there. Just where you are right now: educated, but no longer preachy; fuckable, without being whiny; mature, and not yet fat. Never change.

At least, that's what you feel like America keeps telling you.

An old Esquire article, randomly stumbled across, only confirms that you weren't imagining things. This ode to "The 27-Year-Old Woman" is a love-letter to your agesake, [...]

May I totally gay out on you for a minute? There are two Esquires, at war with each other. There is the magazine that published the Roger Ebert profile, which is, by all accounts, amazing. (I can't read it yet because I don't have any time for a meltdown right now!) Then there is the magazine that is producing "Inside Their Olympics: Get All-Access Analysis from Lovely Athletes at the Winter Games (Easier on the Eyes Than Costas, Eh?)," starring "North America's Loveliest Olympians," which, wow, seriously, stab yourselves, your ironic Mad Men shtick is not actually ironic. I think it is this latter Esquire that is [...]

We're only something like four months prior to the opening of James Cameron's Avatar, which is apparently the most important movie of our generation (what if it sucks though!?), and already the pre-buzz has put bricklayer-hot Australian actor Sam Worthington on the cover of Esquire. (Perhaps you remember Worthington from such movies as that last Terminator mess, and, um… that episode of Jag? Or, uh, doing Macbeth in Melbourne?) The magazine describes him, very weirdly, on the cover, as "The Greatest Actor of Our Time?" Because you know, when someone finally says that about you, do you really want it to be ending with a question mark? Is [...]

OH YES. "And women no longer need to be beautiful in order to express their talent. Lena Dunham and Adele and Lady Gaga and Amy Adams are all perfectly plain, and they are all at the top of their field."

Actual words, typed consecutively, and somehow published. Despite the obvious questions—how the hell did poor Amy Adams get wrapped up in that claim!? And also "how soon is Adele going to BEAT YOU TO DEATH?"—I also… I… I don't know where to start with Stephen Marche's half-profile of Megan Fox for Esquire. I thought the mens' mags had moved on from hiring ghouls—I mean, smart ones even!—to be ghoulish [...]

"Most women act as though they're sexual Olympians, as though they're doing the men in their lives the greatest of favors merely by presenting themselves like a downed deer strapped to the hood of a car. Some of you are deluding yourselves…. Like, maybe grab a mirror and spend some time learning how your own body works. It's nice, too, when you don't treat our semen like it's battery acid." —Chris Jones, Esquire.

20) Fire Jolly Ranchers

19) Arby's Jamocha Shake

18) Soft-Boiled Egg

17) Melted Toffifay Candy

16) Steri-Fab Bed Bug Killer

15) Grape Snow Cone

Which mild variety of irony is this, I can never keep them straight.

Two things: Megan Fox is hot, and Harold Hayes is rotating around in his grave like a doner kebab on a spit.

It sounds preposterous, and it is. But the story of Esquire's grand plan to shoot a bevy of distinguished men and women in the altogether is, so far as I know, true. Here's the first paragraph of the unbylined, unheadlined story from the February 1970 edition of The Los Angeles Advocate:

Amazing! But how is it possible there is no record of these scandalous plans, save for a microfilm'd squib in a West Coast gay rag? (Go ahead and look. You will find nothing.) Before consigning this to the realm of the urban legend—albeit a legend that no one seems to know—I ran it by Gerald Clarke, Capote's [...]

April's Esquire (when the mail arrives, it arrives all at once!) has an anonymous essay called "Why Men Cheat." Like all these sorts of things, it's fundamentally "naughty" and "incoherent" and contradictory and sad. "Men don't cheat because they can. Men cheat because they must, because they need to. This is the male struggle…. It's what they are built for. It is a function of the mathematics of their reproductive function. It is the by-product of longer life spans, more-deadening careers, too much work. And it is the consequence of an instinctive refusal to give up one's own need entirely for the flawed and antiquated apparatus of marriage." [...]

Is Esquire just for men who hate women? Or is it just a sideline? Their Valentine's Day date ideas package… written by a woman… is stuffed with resentment and seething anger! So maybe this is some Valerie Solanas thing going on, where some rogue lady writer is trying to destroy heterosexualism? For the inert, useless Esquire reader, they have recommendations "For the Woman Expecting You to Propose" (give her a "spa day"! Because "It's no ring, but it's indulgent enough for her to brag about to her friends." Ha, prepare to die). There is the advice that you "Don't spend more than: $35 on a ton of good, [...]