Esquire magazine, the usually literate men’s magazine that spun off Hugh Hefner’s Playboy in the Madmen-era 1950’s still tries to live up to it’s venerable T & A tradition by publishing an annual “Sexiest Woman Alive” issue. They started the ball a few years back with an incendiary cover of Angelina Jolie, and due to popular demand, have kept right on doing it.
This year, the honor went to Minka Kelley and no sooner did I get the email alert from Zinio that my digital copy of this issue had been published and was ready for iPad consumption did I download the issue and “thumbed” through it. After all, the local press has been buzzing with the news that ex-CNN bureau chief (and lately ex-news boss of ABS-CBN) Maria Ressa had trumped all the gorgeous Filipinas in our fair land to be anointed the sexiest woman in the Philippines. Obviously the pixieish broadcast journalist was chosen not for being a dazzling beauty but for her journalistic smarts and spunk and had no intention of parading in a bikini and high heels, which meant that somehow Esquire had revised its rules on femme hotness and was including of women of substance for a change.
Here is a link to that very short feature.
The one-page item appeared in a haphazardly researched feature called “A Woman We Love… From Every Country In the World.” which has turned out to be a web-only special. Could you imagine my surprise to find that the Philippines’ entry was listed just before Poland’s Alicja Bachleda (Colin Farrell’s ex and star of that Irish mermaid flick Ondine).
Well as it turned out, the print edition of Esquire has remained steadfastly devoted to “sexiest women alive” in a traditional sense. Because Maria Ressa is nowhere to be found in the print edition. Once again, the Philippine media’s giddiness every time a Filipino somehow makes it to the world stage has yielded stories that generate false expectations.
Since the print edition may still be en route to Phlippine news stands on some trans-Pacific cargo flight, I thought you might want to know. In the meantime, three thumbs up for Zinio and digital distribution, I have never had to pay exorbitant bucks for a foreign magazine in Magnet and Bufini again.
The Ayson Chronicles 