Website Of The Week: For Him Magazine
Web sites are funny places, often when you open a Web site for the first time it’s a bit like going to one of those established chain restaurants where everything is very plastic, it takes ages for you to wade through the menu and actually find something both appealing and satisfying. Things can go either way. Firstly, you can get into it, have the time of your life, love the food and really feel like you belong. Alternatively, the waitress can spill the soup all over you, the food arrives in a state fit for the dogs, and then they overcharge you. Having just spent a couple of hours in the FHM Web site this reviewer is really not quite sure what to make of the feast.
Appearance and presentation score very high, lots of pictures, (which can always be enlarged!) well designed pages, and of course the usual effort has been made to ensure that there are lots of things to click on and those mouse buttons are well used, remember, interactive is the word. 
Perhaps the simplest way is to ask a couple of initial questions. Number one, do you like Beavis and Butthead. Second, do Gary and Tony from Men Behaving Badly influence the way you live your life in any way whatsoever? Lastly, do women, beer, fighting, and sex form the key subjects in your adult life? OK, if you can answer yes to at least one of these, or if you’re still reading this review then FHM site may well be the place for you.
FHM do their best at promoting the magazine itself without actually giving away too much – but there is still plenty in the site – if you like looking at pictures of the likes of Kimberley Davies and Donna D’Errico in their underwear then you’re certainly onto a winner. In fact if you love women in general then you’ll be in heaven. You can compare your own records with FHM’s 100 sexiest women in the world, cast a vote for who you think the best Babe is, and even test your knowledge in the Unusual Sexual Acts quiz. The features themselves begin to run a little dry here, I guess you have to buy the magazine to read anything of any real substance, and there’s a big shift over to what the men out there have to say for themselves.
A very large part of the site is actually maintained by its readers, FHM NOW consists of jokes and stories ‘to the lads’- ‘for the lads’ – ‘by the lads’. Unless you find the repeated usage of expletives and the same re-hashed jokes about ‘birds, beer, and bar-brawling’ amusing STAY OUT !! On a slightly more serious note, the Bulletin Board often oversteps the mark, if you’re not too easily offended then take a look – perhaps FHM should keep a closer eye on what’s going on ? There are some useful services available through FHM, if you’re one of those new age lads and are feeling a little lost out in Cyberspace, FHM will guide you around the web and hunt out all those sites that were built just for you.
In all fairness FHM clearly know their target audience, and they go all out to keep them amused and entertained. They’ve even constructed a Bloke Test Super League, by answering a series of questions you can see how you fare against the rest of mankind. Need I say much with regards to what the main themes of the questionnaire are? Example – “Have you ever been involved in a pub fight ?.” Quite remarkable really.
So, the answer is, if you like these things in life, then take a look. On the down side, at times some of the FHM pages can seem like group therapy in the monkey house, but then again, it’s all just a bit of a laugh, isn’t it?