For most of the previous decade, I have been on a hunt for a magazine that is actually worth its cover price. Something intelligent that doesn’t obsess about cheap fashion, patronise its readers, recycle pointless sex tips or relationship quizzes, pick holes in celebrities, assume every woman wants to be a mother, or fill its pages with adverts featuring airbrushed models. A big ask, I know.
In 2003 I found Be Unlimited which was devoted to women’s personal and professional development, but sadly this publication has since closed. In 2004, Scarlet appeared on the scene with an up-front attitude to sex and a fresh approach.
Unfortunately, after a couple of years, Scarlet became much more mainstream and is now pretty much like every other women’s title. The most recent issue has a glamorous singer as the cover star, and features “a guide to his sexy hot spots”, “17 mini beauty buys” and an article on Alice in Wonderland fashion. I’m not saying there’s nothing I’d read in Scarlet any more, just that it’s not stuff I’d pay for when I have the internet available to me.
Thankfully, last year, Filament - available online for £4.99 - arrived to attempt to plug the gap in the market for something that intelligent women will want to read. Well, intelligent straight and bi women at least. I should perhaps warn you in advance that, as well as interesting articles, this magazine contains photos of men in various states of undress!
I managed to get hold of a copy of issue four of this quarterly and was intrigued to discover that it was extremely varied. As well as the article on Japanese rope bondage and interview with the wonderful Annie Sprinkle that were promised on the cover, there are also articles on tolerance, borderline personality disorder, growing your own vegetables, and women in the computer game industry, plus interviews with the photographers and models whose images they have used throughout.
It’s as varied as a Sunday supplement, without the fashion or terrible advertising, and isn’t nearly as hung up on sex as you’d first think. Okay, so there’s an article on threesomes and a bunch of erotic stories, but Filament’s not just interested in filth and they are also openly listening to their readership to find out what they’d like to see more or less of in the future. Fewer ‘pictorials’ would suit me as I much preferred the photographs that accompanied articles, but I’m possibly alone on that one. I’ll be interested to see what direction this magazine takes if it does indeed listen to its readers.
Annoyingly, despite the varied content, due to the cover it’s not a magazine many of us could comfortably read in public. When the editor, Suraya Sidhu, says that, “When you do this job, many people assume there’s nothing more to you than sex”, I’m not surprised as the cover and website shout far more about smut than ‘smart reading’. If the cover lines are always about sex, that’s probably why critics, publishers and distributors have been surprised by the non-sexual content of Filament. I would have been if I’d looked at the cover alone.
However, all is not lost. It may be far from perfect, but it’s only a year old and Filament really does seem to be on the right track. For women who like hot men and intelligent thought? You know, I think they could be right. I’m looking forward to issue five.