Juggs

Juggs is a softcore pornography adult magazine published in the United States which specializes in photographs of women with extremely large breasts. It has been called "the magazine of choice for breast men."^[2]

It is published by Mavety Media Group, originally known for publishing gay pornography magazines in the United States,^[3] and distributed by Larry Flynt Publications.^[4] The magazine readership is mostly blue-collar men in the American South and Midwest.^[5]

Dian Hanson, the magazine's editor for 15 years,^[3][6] described it as "the epitome of bad taste... a humorous magazine, a sexual sideshow."^[1] The magazine title, a slang term for breasts, has become the perennial punch line of any joke that requires a pornographic magazine.^[1][7] It is used by leading American media including Time Magazine, CBS News, and The New York Times as the immediately recognizable title of a pornographic magazine, without further explanation needed.^{[8][9][10][11][12]} After Juggs published a review of artist John Currin's exhibition in 1998,^[13] the magazine's approval was still being used to define the artist's work 11 years later.^[14]

From 1986 to 2001, Juggs was helmed by Dian Hanson who had edited multiple pornographic magazines since 1977.^[3] She has said that when she first arrived, it was being produced by a staff of solely gay men, who would choose to display photos of the ugliest possible women, to mock their heterosexual readership. Hanson began putting in pictorials of women modeled after the Venus of Willendorf, a prehistoric fertility symbol with enormous breasts and a massive belly, which she saw as a piece of early pornography for cavemen.^[1][5] Hanson stated the magazine's monthly circulation nearly doubled, from 85,000 at the time she joined as editor, to 150,000 by 1996.^[1] Hanson said that Juggs was seen as less threatening to women than many other pornographic magazines, who saw its less than perfect models as closer to themselves, and were more willing to submit their photographs there than to any other magazine she worked at in 25 years.^[3] Hanson left Juggs in August 2001, a year after its publisher, George Mavety, died, leaving the company in the hands of people she didn't want to work for.^[15]

Contributors

Heather Hooters has been a regular columnist since June 1994. Candy Samples had a regular column in Juggs from 1986 through August 2007.^[16][17] Kelly Madison has been a regular columnist since June 2002.^[18][19] Cartoonist Bill Ward wrote and illustrated an article a month for the magazine in his later years.^[20]

References