GQ and the New Masculinity, or 125 Ways to be a Good Guy

Since coming-of-age as a teen in the 1980s, I have been a casual reader and occasional subscriber to GQ, more formally known as Gentleman's Quarterly. It is and has been a documenter of men's fashion and style since 1957, and I think it has waxed and waned as a cultural barometer over the years.

Instead of telling our readers who to be and what to wear, in this new iteration of GQ we wanted to help men find those answers for themselves. The issue was like a giant mood board celebrating all the defiantly nontraditional forms of masculinity that had sprouted out of so many different subcultures—and were fast becoming pop. No cookie cutters allowed. Upon publication, the issue had an instant impact. We had recaptured the zeitgeist, which is exactly where GQ has always belonged.

Jump cut to 2025.

We are now, obviously, in the second Trump administration. Life feels…chaotic. And there are op-ed headlines, almost daily, declaring that we’ve swung back to a retrograde form of masculinity. You know: the whole “men can be men again” thing. (A movement espoused by JD Vance and Mark Zuckerberg—two hyperintelligent individuals who also happen to be untrustworthy when it comes to anything cultural.)

At the same time, we are supposed to believe that Gen Z represents a lost generation, and that Andrew Tate (whoever that is) has young men by the balls. To which I say: bollocks.

With its most recent issue, reporting on "The State of the American Male in 2025," the men's magazine is wading right in to the tricky discussion of masculinity. And, rightfully, it's not taking itself too seriously with the hilariously absurdist picture of a whimsically game, self-deprecating Glen Powell. 

When Glen Powell was in his 20s, he wrote Sylvester Stallone a letter. At the time, Powell was still trying to succeed in Hollywood and, as he recently described it to me, at “the point of famine.” Stallone was casting the third installment of his aging-action-hero franchise, The Expendables 3. Powell, an unknown desperate to join the ranks of a call sheet full of over-the-hill action stars, recounted for Stallone the way he was raised. In Texas, Powell said in his letter, he grew up with a gun range in his basement, had learned to fight from his uncles, and had spent long stretches of his childhood trying to find new ways to cheat death.

And, because he all love lists, the magazine is offering up a classic etiquette guide piece with "GQ's 125 Rules for Modern Gentlemen."

This means we’re helping you navigate everything from the modern landscape of online-dating etiquette to how to act in that all-women Pilates class to when (and when not) to pop a Zyn, while offering you a refresher on everything from thank-you notes to how to be a conscientious human being in public to how to act at a dinner party. The result is a list of 125 rules on how to be your best-behaved self wherever you go in 2025 and beyond. Friends, dates, colleagues, and the people sitting beside you on your next flight all thank you for reading.