Foreplay Magazine Cover
That may sound a bit odd but before I explain how different it is let me explain my thoughts on other adult periodicals. Some are specialist and therefore do not have a wide audience. They are great for what you could generally call special interest groups but not something that the wider porn loving public would generally buy. Then there are the decreasing number of more general pornographic magazines. These are struggling because there is little to differentiate them from each other but more importantly the Internet is providing most of what they can provide – for free.
So is there a space in the market for a new pornographic periodical?
The people behind Foreplay magazine like to think so. With an editorial staff that could best be described as eclectic and fun loving they cover a diverse range of topics around sex, sexuality, relationships and kink in their publication.
Foreplay Magazine is probably very different from anything you’ve seen before. First of all it’s in a small format, easy to hold, easy to read and easy to slip quietly away when you aren’t reading it. Of its 200 pages, just under one third is ads. However they do not intrude as they occupy the back section of the magazine. Their collection of chat lines, stores, kinky getaways and personal services are there if you want them, not in your face.
What is also not in your face is page after page of models with their legs open and pouty poses. If you are looking for acres of naked flesh on display Foreplay isn’t the mag for you.
Foreplay does however offer something that has become all but absent from adult magazines in the last ten years or so – fun. You may disagree but I find a lot of the editorial in other adult mags to be joyless and formulaic, not something that Foreplay could be accused of. Its style is frank, open and honest. It’s about sexuality, not just about jacking off. But if you do want to jack off then there’s some very nice erotic fiction for you to read, in my opinion a far more fulfilling way to become aroused than airbrushed pictures.
Some of the sections in Foreplay are what you’d expect, the aforementioned erotic fiction, letters page and reviews of DVDs, toys and clubs. What will come as a refreshing change to anyone used to “traditional” porn mags is features like the one about a CFNM fetish party, a report from Torture Garden in Italy and an honest and therefore enlightening piece by Jane Fae about being a transvestite and the attitudes of others towards TV men.
I can thoroughly recommend Foreplay Magazine to anyone wanting something a little different from their adult mags. As Suze put it, Foreplay is like the adult version of readers Digest, and they won’t try and get you to enter into a prize draw!
