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market insight
Maddie speaks Outright
by Ryk van Niekerk
"What are you doing at this faggot function?" demanded Madeleine Rose of a Gauloises representative at a recent gay party in Johannesburg. "If you want nothing to do with gay functions or the gay press, then why are you giving us free cigarettes? We don’t need your cancer." She then went to every gay person in the room who had accepted a packet of Gauloises and trampled the cigarettes to pieces. Why? Gauloises is part of the Rembrandt Group which has categorically stated that it will not get involved in the gay community or the gay press.
"I started Outright in 1993. The prime motivation for starting a serious gay magazine was to change the perception of the gay community: a perception regarding it as a community revolving around sex, drugs and rock ’n roll. Outright wants to change this perception and show that gays are interested not only in naked bodies, what happens in the bedroom, getting roaring drunk and seeing how much coke can be done over a weekend. It is a perception that gays sleep with anybody that moves. There is a whole lot more to the gay culture and the gay press."
Getting established in the gay market was not easy, says Rose. "The gay community is very much a microcosm of the heterosexual macrocosm in which we have inherited a paternalistic society, and translated it very strongly into a male dominated homosexual patriarchal society. Outright also has a predominantly male readership, so there was a lot of resistance to me being a woman – a very strong outspoken gay woman – with definite thoughts of my own, starting a gay publication. But I think people have realised I am quite fair as an editor. When criticism is levelled at me, I do not bury those letters and throw them in the dustbin, I print them. Where they deserve vitriolic comment they get it, where they deserve acknowledgement that I was wrong, I print that too. I like to believe that Outright has become the spokesperson of the gay community. We are getting more and more of a reputation for doing that on all levels.
"We now have a circulation of approximately 8 500 with approximately 24 000 follow-on readers. This is not an official figure as we are not ABC rated. A survey was conducted in 1995 in order to profile my readership and the results were terribly interesting."
Rose says almost two thirds of the respondents will actively boycott homophobic companies and those who do not support gay rights. "Subsequently I have had request upon request from the public to find out whether a boycott list of such companies exists. They also often ask when I am going to print the names of companies that boycott Outright on the grounds that it is a gay publication. Some companies accuse Outright of being pornographic. There is, however, nothing pornographic about Outright. It never has been."
She believes pornography should not be confused with skin. "We realised very quickly that our support was good because there was a need for a serious gay publication. But what we perceived to be strong in terms of the need for a serious gay magazine, was not necessarily commercially viable, because especially the gay male person is visually stimulated. Let’s not walk away from that. Therefore, we publish very artistically stimulating photographs. You will never, ever find erect penises in Outright and if you buy an Outright for that, I will give you back your money because you are wasting your time."
Nonetheless, she has to sell her publication. "People are visually stimulated and you will find skin in the articles published in Outright. There is skin in the regular features on gay club competitions, and in the Mitch Brenner and Guy Bruno articles. Mitch Brenner writes Cruising The Movies and Gay Bruno writes Talking Heads. They are invariably male centric, but I try to balance the gender content as far as possible. That is as flesh oriented as you will find in Outright."
According to Rose, Exit goes to the other extreme and the reason that it does, is very simple. "The publication is losing market share to Outright, there is no question about that. Exit’s greatest competition is a new magazine called GaySA, written by Andrei Oberholtzer, who used to be the mainstay of Exit. Andrei is going to take further market share from Gavin Hayward (editor of Exit). However, a number of people have said to me that they do not know where they would be without a magazine like Outright, because it gives them something to read. Gavin believes that the way he is going to win his market share back, is by giving the gays of South Africa naked dicks."
Rose believes the publication has evolved to where she does not need to sell the magazine with flesh. "I do not know if I am necessarily changing the publication to the degree that I want gays to move away from this image. If I ever get to a point with a publication where I cannot improve it, then it’s time for me to sell it. I think the gay community is very innovative and reactionary and I would like to believe Outright reflects this, and that it has also become very sophisticated."
She launched Outright as South Africa’s only gay and lesbian lifestyle magazine. The mast head reads: SA’s only alternative lifestyle magazine. She did that for a very specific reason: There are a lot of people who do not want a magazine that screams "gay" on the cover. "The cover still says it is very much a gay magazine – let’s not make any bones about it." The answer lies in the public and commercial world’s changing perception of the gay media, of Outright in particular. It changed within a short period of time," Rose says.
"I appeared on the M-Net actuality program, Carte Blanche, earlier this year and the reaction was quite phenomenal. The change in attitude towards Outright after that interview was dramatic. The total ignorance beforehand meant that many companies did not wish to be associated with the gay press. The last issue of Outright reflects this change in attitude.
"When we first started Outright, we begged Gilbey’s advertising agencies to place advertisements in Outright. They refused. It was like hitting your head against a brick wall. In February last year, I made a presentation to Gilbey’s to show them why they should be involved with the gay community and gay media. And they did become involved. Since then, the mainstream media have shown an increasing recognition for Outright as an advertising medium. I think removing skin had a lot to do with this, but Outright never had sufficient skin content for people to have objected to it anyway.
"Gilbey’s is now violently against the other gay publications on the market, as they are not interested in their products being portrayed in a magazine or newspaper that has erect, naked dicks. It is just not befitting their image," says Rose.
"Absolut Vodka is part of the total gay culture in America. Absolut is a Swedish vodka, which went to the American market and put an advertisement in a gay publication. The faggots said, 'Wow! A mainstream advertiser launching in the gay press, let’s run with that.' Absolut is now the gay vodka of choice in America. When I found out that Absolut was coming to South Africa, I phoned them and said Outright wanted their advertising.
"Absolut’s agents wanted to buy our front cover, something they apparently had not done before. I agreed and sold them the cover of the August 1994 edition at a ridiculously low price. The week prior to publication, I learned that Absolut had bought the cover of another publication on the same pretext. In very many ways, I was conned by their agency. Absolut now wants to participate in the gay market and advertise regularly in Outright. They do not get a special rate or special privileges. If they want to target the straight market, I do not have a problem with that, but then they should not ask favours from the gay community."
Rose warns the time is coming, "very, very soon" that these practices and responses will be published in Outright. "Then companies will understand the real buying power of the gay community. Gay rights are entrenched in the constitution and if I am now going to be told 'I will not support a gay publication,' I will hit that company in the constitutional court. Please believe me; I am very, very adamant about the fact that I will not support anyone who endorses any kind of gay discrimination."
In 1995, Outright became an alternate monthly, instead of the previous monthly publication. There are two reasons for this, Rose explains.
The advertising pool within the gay community is really quite small and there are only a few publications gay clubs, restaurants and bars want to advertise in. Outright’s rates are higher than Exit, Esteem and GaySA and therefore people were saying, "I want to advertise in every single issue of Outright, but I cannot afford it."
"Outright has expanded enormously in the last few years and is, page-wise, growing larger and larger every issue. I have a public relations consultancy, a design studio, and I write Outright. I do not write it cover to cover, but I do process every single solitary word that goes into each edition. Unless I double my staff, I cannot bring out a 112 page magazine every month, but by July of next year, at the very latest, I want Outright to be monthly again."
Rose also added more community orientated pages to the publication, like the HIV-Update, Medically Speaking, From the Couch, and a section called Newsmakers. "It’s great from Outright’s topicality point of view to have a section like Newsmakers. It actually originated from the community because of a letter that said: 'I’m tired of reading about Boy George, I’m tired of reading about whoever. I want to know about local icons, South Africans I can look up to.'"
She believes the role Outright plays in the community is going to evolve even more now gays’ constitutional rights have been enshrined. The cover story of the May/June issue, True Feelings on Gay Children, underlines her responsibility to the public. It was motivated by two teenage girls who committed suicide because their parents could not accept they were gay.
"If I change the homosexual perspective of one’s own homosexuality, I will sleep better at night and write cover stories like: Thanks mama, I like the genes, because so many gays’ parents say to them: 'If you want to change, you could'. There are three basic arguments used by parents, that being the first. The second is 'If you loved me, you would not be gay.' And the third is 'If you love God, you will not be gay.'"
Rose says if she is instrumental in changing one of those preconceived heterosexual perspectives, to make gay people’s lives a little easier, she would have achieved what she set out to achieve with Outright. "I never want to hear of another suicide that occurred because a parent had put pressure on a gay child.
"We have a tremendous number of gay children who leave Outright on the coffee table when mom and dad come to visit. They pick this up and ask, 'This is a great magazine, can I read this?' And we have kids buying subscriptions to Outright for their parents; we have even had parents who buy subscriptions for their children. I think we have done a lot to change heterosexual perspectives and perceptions and I’d like to believe – maybe not militantly enough – that we have made gays feel better about their homosexuality. Outright has lent dignity to so many gay people’s lives and has given so much value to the gay community. Not only from a heterosexual perspective, but from a homosexual perspective as well. It makes them feel so much happier about themselves."
Rose firmly believes Outright has changed many heterosexual perceptions of homosexuality. "I do not think I have done it alone. I think the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality, the lobbying that has been done in parliament, the support the African National Congress, the Democratic Party and to a limited degree the National Party, have given to the inclusion of the sexual orientation clause in the constitution, has done a lot to change heterosexual perceptions."
She thinks Outright has achieved one thing, and that is that a lot of straight people do not see the gay community only as a skin community any more. "I think we have done a lot to change heterosexual perspectives and perceptions and I would like to believe that Outright has gone a long way to make gays feel better about their homosexuality."
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