Rodney

When I stopped reading it, a fair number of the ads were nothing but hype for products they were pushing. They were also pushing the massive-muscle, ultra-ripped look as the ultimate, even though it's pretty darned artificial. And frankly you could never look like a lot of the guys they had featured unless you did your supplement shopping in Tijuana or had great natural genetics, or both. Went to a talk by Tom Platt once in which he was downbeat about the Weider operation. Later bolted the Weider org briefly for that alternate bodybuilding competition organization that didn't last long and whose name I forget.

I think that I finally threw the last M&F down in disgust after I was reading the letter column one day, and some guy wrote in to say that he didn't care for the ultra-ripped look, and that older-generation lifters like Dave Draper had the bulk and shape and a somewhat smoother look. The editorial reply was (in all caps) YOU MEAN LIKE FAT?! Geez, I see Dave Draper three times a week -- I belong to his gym -- and I'd be grateful if I was ever half as built as he is, even at his age. M&F is out in its own world, and that world is mostly about selling stuff, not just the magazine. I'm sure there's some good info there, but I don't trust them and I definitely don't send beginners there.