For much of the 1990s and early 2000s, I was tapped by women’s magazines to explain what guys think and why they do the things they do.
I was Jake for Glamour, the Guy Guru at Cosmo, and a male “expert” for Good Housekeeping, YM, Twist, Redbook, and Women’s Health.
I had zero expertise to speak of other than being a guy, but somehow was entrusted with this job.
It’s still, apparently, one of the most interesting things about me.
I wasn’t alone. There’s a small fraternity who share this odd magazine DNA — men who got paid, often under fake names, to translate men for an audience of women.
I caught up with two of them, Ky Henderson (my editor and successor as the Guy Guru at Cosmo) and Andrew Postman (another Jake at Glamour), to talk about whether those reader questions were actually real, the topics editors wouldn’t let us touch, and whether we have any regrets about the advice we gave lovelorn Gen Xers and Millennials.
