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[neverlukewarm]

Hi everyone. I'm not a regular poster but I read this today and wanted to share it. Male magazines are one of things that get me absolutely fuming, and this very good article about them set me off.http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1596384,00.html

Comments

[delphyne_]

Bunch of misogynistic wankers.

I hope their penises drop off.

I notice they have the pseudo-feminism down to pat: a woman taking her clothes off for men is somehow "empowering". I wonder what the reaction would be if there was a slew of white-supremacist magazines on the market, mocking and degrading people from ethnic minorities.

[ruggerdavey]

That relates to one of the things I found so bizzare when I was in the UK. Things that seemed to be newspapers to me had naked women right there in the opening pages. And this whole "male magazine" culture seems equally bizarre to me. In the states, I can't imagine that anyone would try to say it wasn't porn. Plus, all those descriptions of the women in those magazines make me cringe...and Abi Tittmus... Insane.

[welsey]

We've definitely got more than our share of these exact same magazines in the states; FHM (mentioned in the article!), Maxim and Stuff for example, although I'm sure there are more. And they definitely try to say they're not porn all the time, too.

[ruggerdavey]

Huh. Apparently I don't look at the magazine racks closely enough.

[fierceawakening]

Yeah, I've seen them. They're pretty creepy, because they're marketed as almost like... Cosmo for men, with some pictures. The rest, at least the one I looked at, was billed as "sex advice," almost a parallel to those silly "PLEASE YORU MAN IN BED NOW!" headlines you see on Cosmo. But you open it up and it's all about "how to convince her to have sex in rooms other than the bedroom [because of course, as a man you're a sexual adventurer, and as a woman, she doesn't like anything that's not the bed, but will discover the ecstasy she's missing as soon as you turn on the charm]" and teh like.

[sarsalot]

Just a guess, but I'd say there'd be guidelines/ratings on what they can publish withou having their laddie mags shrinkwrapped, that would include, say, breasts (but no visible nipples) and maybe bum, but not vulvas/vaginas. I'd also say, for breasts being more sexualised, most of the time (for a lot of history) cleavage has been an accepted part of women's fashion, so most people are going to see breasts (in a vaguely or outright sexual way) a lot more than they see a vagina, so when they think sexygirlparts! breasts spring to mind first.

[fierceawakening]

And then there are the depressing number of men who don't like to look at vulvas and find them ugly and would rather... umm... dive in blind.

Gross.

[timetoknowbe]

ive noticed that! maybe its just where i'm still in highschool and the teenage male idea of sexuality is a distorted porn fantasy, but boys find vulvas repulsive and HORRIFIC. is that *normal*?

[fierceawakening]

That stuff creeps me out more than porn magazines or pron movies, to be honest.

[amphibian23]

There were some interesting quotes in there, from the editors. And disturbing ones, particularly in the first few paragraphs ("previous OWNERS"?- I get that they could be making a jokey aside that implies Courtney Love's so rough she's a dog, but still).
I don't always care about these magazines, but the Guardian journalist suggests misogyny to a degree that I was unaware of.

[fierceawakening]

a jokey aside that implies Courtney Love's so rough she's a dog, but still

Calling women dogs isn't misogyny if it's a joke? Or is it somehow OK if it's Courtney Love?

[amphibian23]

No, but what I initially interpreted it as the idea that it was implying men owned their girlfriends, which is really bad