MAXIM Hot 100 2014

Summer is a time for pools and beaches, barbecues and heat waves, and lots and lots of beautiful celebrities wearing next to nothing.  Yes, the Maxim Hot 100 2014 has come out, and while there are a few changes from last year, it's the same basic, beautiful format as last year.

The Maxim Hot 100 is voted on by Maxim readers, then published in the summer.  Unlike past years, this time around the Hot 100 isn't a separate part of the magazine, but the first half of the month's issue.  As with past years, each winner gets a photo (from a page shared with several others to a two-page spread), brief paragraph about them, and the occasional quote.  ("Trying too hard to be sexy is the worst thing you can do.  Sexiness should be effortless.")  The list is full of singers, actors, models (from the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and Victoria's Secret), and other celebrities.

 Of course, popularity waxes and wanes, and the Maxim Hot 100 reflects these changes.  Last year four of the top 10 -- including the #1 winner, Miley Cyrus -- were former Disney stars; this year, none of them made the top 10 -- possibly because Spring Breakers isn't as fresh in people's minds -- and Miley drops down to #25.  There are some of the nigh-perpetual selections -- Beyonce, Mila Kunis, Rihanna, Katy Perry -- and no joke entries this time around.  (Sorry, Stephen Colbert.)

The Maxim Hot 100 is beautiful and exciting to its fans, and sexist and superficial to its detractors.  I definitely fall into the former camp.  It's a chance for Maxim fans to voice who they find hot, and to get all the results featured over half the magazine.  Woot!

Written by James Lynch

All hail Maxim's number one: Candice Swanepoel!

MAXIM Hot 100 2013

Top lists are usually released at the end of the year, but Maxim has been bucking that trend by releasing its Hot 100 collection of beautiful women with its June issue.  This year's collection is very similar to last year's list: amazing photographs of beautiful women, brief comments, and popularity being as important as beauty.

Voted on by the magazine's readers, the Maxim Hot 100 2013 is, well, just that.  Each person picked has a photo (from the magazine in most cases), accompanies by brief, often humorous comments about them.  For example, Candice Swanepoel had this entry: "Our favorite South African scored a hat trick when, for the third time, she secured the cover of the Victoria's Secret swim catalog (way better than those stuffy issues they put out the rest of the year.)"  There are plenty of actors, singers, models, and other famous folks.  And in what I suspect is too perfect to be coincidence, Stephen Colbert lost the #69 spot he had in 2012 to Manti Te'O's fake girlfriend, "shown" below.

While it may seem amazing that such a list could have problems, the voters do display something of an... immediacy in their selection, based on the picks' popularity.  I'm just as sure that Heather Graham made the list for her "stripper with a heart of gold" role in The Hangover 3 as that Anne Hathaway got left off for her less-than-glamorous doomed prostitute in Les Miserables.  Previous mainstays got left off because of less current publicity (like Nicole Scherzinger, Jennifer Lopez, and Britney Spears), while Alice Eve made it in thanks to her gratituous underwear moments in Star Trek Into Darkness.

Still, Maxim has never taken itself too seriously, and the Maxim Hot 100 2013 is a visually stunning list of who's hot -- and a reflection of who's hot right now.  (It also lends support to my theory that female Disney stars become highly sexualized as soon as they get away from Disney, as former Disney stars make up four of the winners in the list's top 10 -- including the top two spots.)  While the spoilers about the selection hit the Internet before the magazine did, this is still an enjoyable little photographic romp of hot women in the public eye.

Written by James Lynch

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MAXIM Hot 100 2012

Democracy can be a strange thing. The current issue of Maxim magazine includes their annual Hot 100 list, which claims to be "the definitive list of the world's most beautiful women." This year, though, instead of choosing the people on the list, the Maxim staff let their readers vote to determine the list. The results are... different.


The format of the Hot 100 supplement is the same as in the past. The list counts down from 100 to 1, with several entries to a page and a few women getting a whole page of their own. (Numbers nine to two all get a full page, while the number one entry has two pages.) The entries also have a paragraph about the subject, whether career notes (Yvonne Strahovski: "This Aussie has been a superspy (Chuck), went up against Robert De Niro (Killer Elite), and will have direct contact with Frankenstein (I, Frankenstein)," trivia (Sarah Hyland, teenager Haley Dunphy on Modern Family, is actually 21), or plenty of bad jokes. The list is largely made of the usual suspects: actresses, singers, supermodels, athletes, and other celebrities.

This year, thanks to voting the net for "the world's most beautiful women" got cast quite wide. There are Victoria's Secret models here -- but there are as many past Disney stars (Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus (below), Vanessa Hudgens) and one Nickelodeon star (Victoria Justice). It makes sense that Dominique Storelli (the winner of the Maxim "Hometown Hotties" contest) is here -- but why once-convicted murderer Amanda Knox? An animated character made the list (which I suppose could open the door for a slew of comic book and animated film characters), as did a dude (Stephen Colbert, who I so hope covers his "win" on The Colbert Report). There are enough grown daughters of celebrities I grew up with (Eddie Murphy, Phil Collins) to make me feel old. And while any list like this inevitably omits people who "should" have made it (this is the first year in ages Britney Spears didn't show up), how did they miss Beyonce, who was voted People magazine's Most Beautiful Woman in the World?

The Maxim Hot 100 is bundled with the current issue in a sealed, black plastic bag, presumably to keep people from finding out who got the number one spot (and possibly to give the impression it's somehow more titillating than the usual issue of Maxim). While this collection doesn't redefine society's current icons of female beauty, the voting element resulted in some interesting choices.

Reviewed by James Lynch