Lads' mags

Submitted by AWL on 10 September, 2010 - 12:17 Author: Sofie

To write this article, I decided to go and buy some lads’ mags; they’ve become a byword for sexism and I wanted to see for myself quite how bad they are. I wasn’t disappointed — both the notoriously crude cheaper weeklies like Nuts and Zoo, and the glossier monthly “lifestyle” magazines like FHM and Loaded are plastered from with representations of women that could have walked out of a Carry On film. We’re all either the butt of sexist jokes or reduced to a perfect tanned and toned figure.

And it’s not just the pictures; Zoo magazine has caught media attention with competitions to win your girlfriend a boob job, by offering men the chance to apply to have sex with a virgin glamour model. Lads’ mags are clearly incredibly sexist.

But alongside what these magazines say to men about women, they say something about men and masculinity too. Women might be breasts and legs and fluff between the ears, but men aren’t any more three-dimensional.

EMAP, the media giant which publishes FHM and Zoo, also owns Heat, Grazia and New Woman magazines. The laddish identity it creates for young men helps it sell huge chunks of advertising space to beer companies in much the same way that its appearance-is-everything women’s magazines are a big source of income from make-up advertisers. For years, feminists have been showing how magazines perpetuate sexist stereotypes, with women’s lifestyle titles telling us to keep thin and please our men, and men’s titles turning us into hyper-sexed brainless bimbos. It’s time we started talking about how these magazines stereotype and influence men. The guys who buy Nuts, Zoo and FHM aren’t all the dribbling, emotionless Neanderthals they’re made out to be. Sexists are made, not born.

Basically all of Britain’s media is sexist. I can’t remember the last time I went to see a film that didn’t have some irritating stereotype of the typical woman in it. Advertising across billboards, TV and newspapers colludes to tell us that all women look a very specific way. And while lads mags are one of the most shocking examples of a society which still sees women as a one-dimensional schoolboy fantasy, I think they’re sometimes scapegoated because they’re explicitly sexual in a way other sexism isn’t.

Anti-lads’ mag activism is becoming a big deal on university campuses. Young women are understandably angry at being confronted with this sexist rubbish every time they enter their uni shops, and are carrying out direct actions like stickering. But there’s an uncomfortably moralistic undertone to some of these actions. There are references to banning 'sexual publications' on campus.

I think these campaigns get it wrong. First of all, as socialists, we are for freedom of speech, even for sexist magazines. But also, these kind of campaigns miss an opportunity to say something about the massive commercialisation of sexuality and the reasons EMAP and others might be interested in that. They don’t talk about capitalism, and they don’t have any answers. Putting white covers over lads mags, or sticking them on the top shelf won’t challenge any of the content and seems motivated by the view that men are irredeemable, and the only solution is for women not to have to be confronted with any evidence of their sexist natures.

Instead, lets call lads’ mags out for what they really are; a very canny attempt by capitalist corporations to construct, own and sell a narrow masculinity in the same way they’ve constructed, owned and sold femininity since women’s media were created. The fact that young men want to look at pictures of naked women is not the problem; the problem is the way these pictures are part and parcel of a lifestyle sold by sports channels, beer companies and Topman.

Comments

Submitted by Newcastle on Mon, 25/10/2010 - 00:33

Dan, did you read the article?
Where does Sofie say what you claim?
Re-read it? She is not high lighting lads mags as the key to fighting sexism, actually blaming capitalism? And is blaming many on the left who support a moralistic response to lads mags and nudity!
You were far from the mark on this one

Submitted by Clive on Mon, 25/10/2010 - 04:32

I have no doubt there is a certain 'middle class feminist snobbery' at large. But surely there *is* a difference between the depiction of women in, at one extreme, heterosexual pornography, and then along the continuum in lad mags, and at the 'other end' of the continuum in images which aspire to be art (whether that means in nude oil paintings, in a film like Realm of the Senses, etc).

I don't mean that these 'art' images of women are necessarily just 'ok', or there's nothing to discuss. Or that there aren't grey areas. (A film like Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs, in which there is actual, not-acted, sex, is meant to be quite high brow but struck me as just sleazy).

But the ends of the continuum surely are different, and not just because the people who are 'intended' to look at art are middle class. Working class people are perfectly capable of going to art galleries, art house cinemas, etc (or watching Channel 4 or BBC 4 or buying/renting DVDs and so on).

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