Classic Reissue: Selling the Sexiest Woman Alive, the Esquire Way

That time Esquire gawked over Jessica Biel in a totally not serial killer-esque way!

I once wrote a piece for Pajiba on the most glaringly sexist profiles ever written, and I wasn’t short of options. Honestly, I could probably do an entire newsletter just on creepy celebrity profiles. However, whenever I am asked to point out what I believe to be the most glaring example of this trend, I always return to this piece.

Esquire. “Jessica Biel is the Sexiest Woman Alive.” October 31, 2005. A.J. Jacobs.

(Read the profile here.)

Esquire Magazine was founded in 1933 and became a pioneering publication during the "new journalism" boom of the 1960s. Norman Mailer wrote for them, as did Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe. They've won numerous awards for top-quality writing and weathered shifting trends in fashion and masculinity. Seen as the less smarmy GQ with a more intellectual edge (and less conservative-leaning politics, especially in the UK edition), Esquire sells itself as a thinking man's magazine. But it's still a men's magazine, which means it spends a lot of time getting super-weird about hot ladies.