Esquire. Enough Said.

Esquire was inspired by devastating economic change on traditional high class sex roles. The Depression diminished male self-esteem because of their fear to lose their jobs, this also caused loss of masculine self-respect. So, Esquire decided to help bring back that self respect by marketing a new male identity. The magazine wanted to commodify free-time from work, which would lead to the consumer spending.
Esquire's founders, David Smart and William Weintraub, proved that with the right demographic the male-identified magazine would spark wide spread interest to advertisers. The concept of the magazine was to give the male a break from a hectic day of work and just have time to relax with himself. It sought to create expectations of desirable upper-middle-class identity.
Esquire also wanted to rid itself from women associations because they thought it would bring a bad audience. It gave advice to what a woman does wrong, like cooking instructions on how to eat at home and replacing hearty meals with portions the size of a pea. Esquire staff wanted the magazine to also project the meaning of good and bad taste. They looked at masculinity as clean and functional. Esquire also promoted the idea that women would ruin a mans leisure time by butting in with questions and the need to control their "free time" for no reason.
Strong masculinity was the initial reason for Esquires success. It's ads of beer, liquor, wine, and the good life was important for advertisers in its pages. Money became linked to the magazine for promoting being an individual and sophisticated. It endowed the readers with that kind of assertion.
Esquire put out the notion that women had no legit role to play, which was important in the marketing arena. It talked about the difference of sex-roles, but recognizing the difference to mainstream sex privilege. The modern woman would take away from the dominant male role, so Esquire's solution to that was putting pictures of women in their magazine to fulfill the "male gaze" fantasy.
The visuals of femininity were there so it wouldn't cross over into homosexuality. It had to be made clear that women were natural objects to the reader's desire. The magazines illustrations were there so the reader could consumer them. This distancing itself from textual and visual content production; male subject versus female object.
Esquire's images of women were advertised as pinup. They were called "Petty Girl." it was a term to depict woman's anatomic structure; large breasts, small waist and butt, and long legs, and Caucasian to put out an erotic appeal. Pinups and art in the magazine were part of consuming desire. But the pinup became problematic, so Esquire had to recreate the aura of sophistication.
"Esky" was Esquires new puppet, who was a walrus was with a blonde mustache, that dressed upscale, and big eyes. Through Esky the magazine was able to have an agreeable dialogue with women and men. The cartoons promoted normalcy, of what Freud called voyeuristic gaze. Esquire turned their line drawing into colorful artworks that had humor to them, aimed toward the masculine position.
The Esquire Man, should take away from the magazine a guide to attitude of "you" in their everyday reality. Men do not need the power to dominate a woman politically. They can exercise the control over the pleasure of women who is in their sight.
Esquire convinced itself that men are in the market for status achieved through the expense of women. It's contribution to the ideology of consumerism is to cater to the female desire that had been robbed from men and their privileges.