Vice Mail

ABUSING OUR PRIVILEGE

Dear

Vice

,

I hope this letter finds you well. I just finished watching your documentary and I must say I am a bit confused as to why this documentary was filmed. My thoughts are: 1. “Did they want to film a video showing their wealth and connections which allowed them to engage in such excursions?” 2. “I get it they are simply just showing how fucked-up the world really is.” 3. “Ah now I see, they are capitalizing on ignorance!” I believe in exposing the underbelly of this crude world of which we exist, but when seeing how much wealth and power the

Vice

founders have, I please ask that your next medium of publish shows what you rich guys are doing to make this a better place.

Cheers, thanks a lot, your typical San Franciscan,

JENNIFER HODAPP

San Francisco, CA

It isn’t so much your knee-jerk, boring, toeing-the-line opinions that mark you as a typical San Franciscan though. It’s the fact that you think you’re smarter than you really are. Stick to anarchist poetry readings and crusty-punk drum circles please. Leave the thinking part to the straight white men. (OK, OK, kidding there. But seriously, fuck off.)

DER TABLOID

Dear

Vice

mag,

HOW COULD YOU DO THIS!!! I was sitting here (Berlin) in my room and was watching this fucking trashy German gossip/celeb TV show called

Taff

on PRO 7 and then I heard them say something about

Vice

magazine… and I was shocked! They went along with one of you guys’ DOs & DON’Ts photographers named Brenda and showed her doing her work taking pics of the fugliest tranny ever: Amanda Lepore. WHY WHY WHY!?!!? You guys should sue the producers of the show cause the show IS SO BENEATH YOU motherfuckers!

Idk… I just had to share this w/ you…

Shalom,

UFUK (Yes, that is my name—blame my parents)

Berlin, Germany

We like Amanda Lepore because we like weirdoes. And PS: You were watching the show in the first place, so stop bitching.

LAST TO KNOW

So yeah, dear

Vice

,

I’ve been meaning to write you for some time now. I forgot what I was going to say. Other than that I remember you having a problem with dudes who wore “product” or gel in their hair. Well, I’m against gel, but I do wear this antifrizz sort of stuff. Otherwise my hair looks like fucking Einstein’s. You got a problem with that!? Also. I was a bit pleased to see you put out a

Vice

Fiction Issue. I gate-crashed your offices back in the summer of ’03 with a copy of my half-baked novella and a pitch for doing a

Vice

Fiction Issue (with stories from some good NY writers I knew). I don’t give a fuck if you remember or not, or ever even noticed, but you putting out the Fiction Issue means that I have good ideas and that I could probably do your job if I just had the right breaks/persistence/resilience. So anyways, it would’ve been nice if it was me sticking my penis into the lit chicks at the Chumley’s fashion shoot, but hey, maybe next year.

JULIAN MATTHESEN

Lower East Side, NY

PS: Now that the

Vice Guide to Travel

is out, I know what you cunts look like. It was cool seeing you down at Motor City. Also do you have any spaces on the soccer team? I got skills.

We have a soccer team?

SF SORROW

Dear

Vice

,

Why do girls think it’s all right to go on about vibrators and “finding the G-spot” and using terms like “the Cadillac of vibrators” and that it doesn’t make female sexuality into the grossest, most pseudoclinical feel-good bullshit on earth? They may think they’re helping promote equality with men by being “sexually frank” and “opening women’s eyes to their own bodies,” but their real male equivalents are the kind of guys who buy blow-up dolls or (shudder) those fake rubber vaginas and then do that thing where they’re like “Oh, everybody uses these, they just pretend they don’t” when they get called out. Genuine perverts. I mean, sure, it sucks that people used to feel bad about themselves and think that going down on a girl was dirty and whatever, but does that mean we can no longer have any lower bound of shame where sex is concerned? Maybe living in San Francisco too long has blinded me to what’s considered acceptable outside of New Gomorrah here and made me something of a reactionary, but it feels like dragging every form of deviance out of the closet not only sucked out all the forbidden appeal they used to hold but also encouraged people to start treating their sexuality with the same sort of casual “whatever works” sense they use buying clothes or a car. Just look at that Magic Wand—it looks like a fucking car buffer from Sears. I am hard-pressed to come up with anything less sexy than the thought of some girl cramming that piece of hardware into her crotch. I’m not advocating a return to 50s-level sexual repression, but can we not push back the tolerance bar one notch before nobody’s able to get a boner and our whole race dies out?

Thanks,

JAMES VINEYARD

San Francisco, CA

Sorry, buddy, can’t really relate. You don’t like the thought of “some girl cramming” a massive vibrator into her crotch? You’re right, you have been in “Frisco” for too long.

HAIR PIE

Dear

Vice

,

Please pass my thanks to Amy and Lesley for finally calling bullshit on girls shaving/waxing their entire crotch-zone. I keep myself reasonably trim, but it feels more and more like having any pubic hair at all beyond a tiny landing strip is some sort of huge offense against men’s interest. I actually had a guy I’d brought home and was about to go down on me be like, “Whoa, uhhh OK,” when he took my pants off and then proceed not to eat me out, like I had some sort of Angela Davis bush or something (it quickly turned out he wasn’t awesome BF material in a number of other departments as well). What really burns me up, though, is that while girls are being held to this ridiculous prepubescent standard, guys seem to feel free to let their pubes flourish into huge Afros that completely engulf their dicks and get caught between your teeth if you even consider giving them head. If they want us to look like 10-year-olds with tits, I say let them turn themselves back into hairless kids and see how awesome it feels.

SARAH FULLER

Brooklyn, NY

We’ll definitely pass your gratitude on to Amy and Lesley if we can machete our way through the jungle of pubes that surrounds them.

Letters are edited for length.

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