Confessions a lads mags journalist

[sam]

Confessions a lads mags journalist

http://www.malehealth.co.uk/userpage1.cfm?item_id=1724

I used to write for a lad’s magazine. It was good fun but, to be honest, I was always a bit embarrassed to tell my women friends – and especially my mum - what I did.A couple of times I thought about quitting but I enjoyed the challenge of trying to present health information in an amusing way. There was no point in quitting anyway as I knew they’d fire me before long. The writing was already on the wall for sections like mine. I watched as each month the sexy nurse picture took up more and more space on the page.

As the circulations of the men’s mags peaked and began to to wobble, competition kicked in and the boob count went up. Things went ballistic when the weekly lads mags – Nuts and Zoo - were launched in 2004.

Now the mags bear little resemblance to those of ten years ago. Most blokes I’ve spoken to don’t care. It’s a little titillation and fun for kids and sad geezers, they say. So what?

But when Martin Robinson of Maxim says that ‘sexual disease is a welcome source of hilarity’, I have to admit it worries me. Over 700,000 people catch a sexually-transmitted disease every year in Britain. There’s a chalmydia explosion in this county and an HIV one worldwide which killed three million people last year. Strange sense of humour you’ve got there, Martin.He goes on: ‘If people aren’t aware of sexual diseases then where have they been? If they ignore what has been taught to them, then that is their choice.’ Trouble is people aren’t being taught anything. In Malehealth’s latest snap survey 76% of respondants said that sex education at their school did not tell them what they wanted to know.The lads mags editors say their mags aren’t porn and I agree with them. That’s part of the problem.

Pornography is like any other genre fiction. If you watch Midsomer Murders or read Inspector Morse, you might think that middle England is more dangerous and deadly than downtown Baghdad but you know it isn’t. Crime fiction has much in common with reality but it isn’t reality. Porn’s the same and most people know it.Trouble is the lads mags blur this line, especially those who feature ‘real’ girls and girlfriends. Presumably even the girls in the lads mags want to say ‘no’ from time to time. The thing is that in the mags they never do.

Porn is also for adults. Ok so loads of kids of see it. But think how many more see the lads mags which have no age restriction and no content restriction like similar women’s magazines have?

Everyone who works in magazines knows that real readers are always five or even 10 years younger than the apparent target market. ‘Just 17′ used to be read by pre-teens. So when the lads mags say they’re targeting 18-30 year olds you can bet your life they’re getting a lot of teens and pre-teens too. Even if just a small proportion of these have their image of women distorted by the what they’re looking at, it must be a cause for concern.

The lads mags ladies are always up for any sort of sex, anytime at all, with any number of blokes and any amount of alcoholic or other lubrication. This will not be the magazines’ readers’ experiences of their own relationships with women. They could interpret this mismatch in a number ways.

they can see one as fantasy, fun or escapism and the other as reality and have no problem distinguishing the two;

they can be unhappy that their reality doesn’t match up to what they read in the mags and feel dissatisfied with themselves;

they can be unhappy that their reality doesn’t match up to what they read in the mags and feel dissatisfied with the women in their lives.

The lads mags editors appear to think all their readers fall into the first category. I just don’t buy that. Even if most do, what about the rest?

Zoo is currently asking: who is Britain’s dumbest girlfriend? One reader said he would be giving his a stale turd ‘to go with her shit brain’. Do you think the author of that witticism is really going to get the presumably post-feminist subtleties behind the original question?

I don’t believe in censorship but I do believe in personal responsibilty.

We still live in a country where it can be very dangerous to be female.Two women are killed every week as a result of domestic violence and nearly a quarter of a million women are victims of rape or serious sexual assault every year. And what about all those women effectively enslaved into prostitution?Martin Daubney, editor of Loaded, is proud to call himself a ‘heavy drinker’ – perhaps it’s the only way he can sleep at night.

The author was a contributing editor to one of the leading men’s monthlies in the early part of this decade.

**

Kudos to Sparkle*matrix for finding this. http://sparklematrix.wordpress.com

[rich]

I don't get why he couldn't just sign his name on it?

[sam]

Yeah, I had some thoughts on that as well. It's worth talking about, but I'm not sure female me is the best person to delve into that territory. I get that as a writer he's probably afraid the male-dominated media will shut him out, but more than that I don't feel qualified to make guesses about.

[rich]

My take: his former job wasn't as prestigious as he makes it out to be and that he doesn't want other men to pick on him; "oh, that piece of shit you used to write for doesn't even count as a lad mag."

That's what I assume whenever I see a man writing anonymously: he inflates his credentials to make a point and then doesn't want that inflation to obscure his point (whether it's a good point or a bad one is irrelevant).

Like, I doubt that the anon author of this piece was really one of Australias TOP ATHLETES! and the author was more concerned with not having his record/legacy argued about than taking personal responsibility for his words:

http://www.xyonline.net/inside.shtml

[delphyne]

The thing is British lads mags have always been appallingly sexist - that's what they were selling themselves on - so I don't understand why he's got such a rosy view of the old days, unless it's to distance himself from the fact that he took part in sexism and misogyny.

[resisterance]

i used to read lads mags. when they were new i used to read Loaded and Bizarre.

Loaded always had interviews and glamour shoots with celebrity women, but it also had a ton of other stuff, music, reviews, monthly tests of some product or another, news, movies, basically they used to have substantial content that wasn't sexist, wasn't related to sex or women in any way. Of course they were selling themselves as the bachelor lads lifestyle, so it was very "phwoooargh" and "beer!", but not in the same vicious way you see now. obviously i'd probably look at the same issues differently now and there is probably loads of sexism in them i didnt notice at the time, being a PornSexDrugsYay person back then.

Bizarre used to be brilliant. Again there was probably loads of sexism I didn't notice in it. But ther was loads of interesting stuff as well, some amazing photo's from round the world, world news, articles about strange people, events, places. It was like a glossier and more nicely done version of Fortean Times. It did aliens and spontaneous human combustion and all sorts.

Then the issues started getting thinner and less interesting stuff was inside. They started having a sealed section full of ads for porn and the sex industry, this section was very nearly as big as the magazine itself. The photo's, previously pictures from outer space or amazing feats or brilliant photo journalist shots from everywhere, started to become just a collection of gruesome shots of injuries - just gore basically. There were then articles about bdsm and swinging and stuff like that.

I don't know why it changed, maybe the editors changed or something. But I remember it happening and everyone I knew who was into Bizarre (mostly men) lost interest just as I did. It had become a gorier more violent version of any lads mag. I'm sure that element was always there but it genuinely used to be interesting.

I actually do have a heap of old issues somewhere in the house, packed up and still packed up from when we moved four years ago. I'm interested to hunt them out and cast my radical feminist eye of them, maybe I too am romanticising the way they 'used to be'.

Interesting also - I used to buy the Sunday Sport. Not the Daily, just the Sunday. And again it was for the strange stories, it was always front page weirdness, Egyptian Mummy Gives Birth, or Wolfboy, or crop circles, etc. It was obviously a load of rubbish but it was funny and I liked that sort of stuff. Now it's all upskirt photos and that element was always there, even back then they had the topless girl who says what tv she'll be watching this week, but it was a much lesser element than it is now.

So I think these magazines have definitely gooten worse, and it creeped up, and I don't exactly know why but younger guys now seem to think it's the best (only) way, whereas guys I grew up with have ditched a lots of these magazines because frankly, they consider them boring. Amongst my male friends now (and that is a smaller group admittedly) the only magazines they really buy are hobby mags, Playstation, PC, photography, cars, sports. Lads mags just don't interest them at all. I have heard them say if they wanted porn they would buy porn, what's the point in Lads mags? So I think Lads Mags are porn for kids who can't buy porn, and porn that is so mainstream that men can read it at work and not get fired.

[Army Of Me]

Here is an email I sent to universal tyres (uk) after seeing their waiting room again yesterday - if anyone wants to email them just look up universal tyres.

"Hello

I am a female customer and I noticed the other day while waiting for my tyre to be fixed (I have used your garage before and noticed the same), there was a big pic of a nearly naked girl in obvious view of customers.

Also, there was a copy of Zoo magazine in the waiting room full of topless "totty" from Big Brother, in all sorts of sexual poses.

I don't agree that normal everyday women should be made to look at this sort of thing when they don't wish to, just going about their daily lives - it makes women look like just a flesh and blood blow-up doll, and reduces them to just bumps and holes for men to grope and penetrate, and masturbate over.

As a female customer, I will not be using your shop again in future unless you reassure me that this anti-female policy is changed. I know many of my girlfriends have agreed that us girls have been silent about this for too long, and this promotion of women as just real-life masturbation stuff is everywhere now. So I am making a complaint.

Please change your shops into pro-women ones, not anti-women. Many of us hate this stuff but do not feel that we have the power to complain - but this is a start.

Thank you"

Female customers can vote with their feet you know - damn, why didn't I put that in the email too? Well, they probably gathered that just the fact that a female sent the mail.

[annared]

vgl Years ago, I also used to read Bizarre mag, because it was err Bizarre. Really weird and strange storys from around the world. Now it's just gross. Have you been on the forum? I joined and got about 10 threads taken down because of some of the most extreme porn i have seen...rape/torture etc. They still 'do' porn but it's more moderated now. I occasionaly go on just to check up.

[resisterance]

vgl Years ago, I also used to read Bizarre mag, because it was err Bizarre. Really weird and strange storys from around the world. Now it's just gross. Have you been on the forum? I joined and got about 10 threads taken down because of some of the most extreme porn i have seen...rape/torture etc. They still 'do' porn but it's more moderated now. I occasionaly go on just to check up.

It's strange though because I used to like it and many of my friends did too, and as it has got more gruesome and pornified noone I know buys it anymore.

So, I'm thinking that by getting more pornified they have picked up a lot of extra revenue from sex industry advertisers. Because they have alienated and driven away their formerly loyal readers.

Obviously to an extent they make their own market so there is now an extending market for gore'n'porn, but I think that these changes were not reader/customer led, but were led by money from the sex industry.

I think that advertising revenue from the cosmetics industry has dumbed down women's magazines as well. Marie Claire always had all the ads, but it also used to be renowned for it's features on women's lives around the world.

Follow the money, basically. I think it's the money in these industries that have forced the pornifying and 'dumbing down' of these media, not the customers. Unfortunately though they do create their own markets, en masse people believe what they see and what they are told, so if they are told what they want is gore/porn then that's what many grow to think they want.