Feminism in Lads Mags’ (FHM & Nuts)
Feminism,
it’s been around for hundreds of years now and is still going strong today,
“The term feminism came into English usage around the 1890’s” (2007, p. 4).
Although it was started in the 1890’s Jenainati and Groves (2007) say that
“Women’s conscious struggle to resist discrimination and sexist oppression goes
much further back”. There are many types of Feminists such as Lesbian
feminists, Socialist feminists, Marxist feminists and Ecofeminists. The question is why are women treated with
less respect then men? Even nowadays Women can still be seen as the underdogs
to men. John Storey (2009) states that “Through all time women as a class have
been silent”. This shows us that maybe women are too scared to speak up to a
man, which isn’t very good, as no one, regardless of gender should be scared to
speak up or stand up to anybody. Nowadays in popular culture, women should be
seen as equals. “Women have played central roles as consumers of popular
culture products” (2009). Women are known to buy make up, jewellery, nice
clothes (some maybe revealing), perfume and things to do with their hair, just
so they can look nice for a man. However, is there any need for this? Yes it
gives the makers of these products a profit, but is it really necessary? Why
should women buy things just so men will like it? It’s a mystery.
Some
magazines in the media downgrade women like they are objects, most typically ‘lad’s
mags’ such as FHM and NUTS. These magazines mainly have images of women either
barely clothed, in sexy underwear, topless or in some cases naked. Young girls
that see these types of magazines in newsagents or online etc. will see these
half naked girls and think that that is the way to be and will inspire to be
like them. You already have young girls that want to be glamour models and who
are getting plastic surgery at such a young age, which is so wrong. People need
to learn that all women can be beautiful, regardless of their body shape and
looks.
FHM is one
of these magazines that seem to downgrade women. This magazine is typically
aimed at teenage boys and young men, although some older men have been known to
enjoy it. Females don’t really touch this magazine. I mean why would you want
to read a magazine that downgrades your sex and makes it out to be an object?
FHM regularly run competitions in their magazine such as ‘Top 100 Sexiest
Females’. This contest just judges females based on their looks, which in a
feminist view is seen as wrong. There is more to a female then her looks. She
may be really intelligent, with a degree in something like Law or Business. Or
she may have been the founder of a very successful company who are now making
millions, just like Karen Brady, best known for her appearances on BBC’s The Apprentice.
Yes, some women may be beautiful, but they can also be a whole lot more than
that. One competition that is running at the moment is “The Sexiest Women on
TV” (FHM, 2013). “We want to know who your favourite TV minx is. Which girls
are so hot that you’d happily invest in a brand new television if it meant you
could see them in sparkly high-definition?” (FHM, 2013). They refer to women as
‘Minxes’ a Minx is stated to be “A girl or young woman who is considered pert,
flirtatious, impudent or promiscuous” (The Free Dictionary, 2013). How do they
know any of these ‘sexy’ women on TV are any of these things? They don’t know
them personally. They could be the complete opposite. They could be quite
boring who have no interest in being flirtatious or promiscuous. Most men who
read this magazine only see these women on the TV or in magazines or on the
internet. They have been made up to look good. When you see an image of a
female celebrity in a magazine or online, it has most likely been photoshopped.
So a particular celebrity may not look that good in real life. This sort of
contest in FHM could be linked to the Recover and Reappraisal approach of
feminism as stated by John Storey (2009) “Cataloguing and criticising images of
women may have been the earliest of the contemporary feminist approaches to
popular culture”. This is exactly what
FHM have done. They are taking images of these TV celebrities and letting their
readers’ judge and criticise them, just based on their looks. This is becoming
very common in our culture these days. Another outrageous thing that FHM are
doing at the moment is having a section of their website dedicated to “High
Street Honeys” (FHM, 2013). This is basically the public submitting images of
themselves. However, in these images females are seen in sexy lingerie, half
naked mainly showing of their breasts or in some circumstances completely
naked. The females that submit these images are just members of the public,
they aren’t celebrities. This sort of thing is encouraging young girls to take
photos of themselves in compromising positions, barely clothed and then to put
them online, where thousands of people can see them. This sort of thing isn’t
setting a good example for the next generation. They may think that the only
way to get noticed is to take naked photos and send them to a porn magazine.
Young girls have so much more potential than this and it would be such a shame
if this was to be the norm in the next few years. As well as having things in a
magazine and online, FHM also post frequent videos onto their youtube. One in
particular caught my eye (FHMWeb, 2013) it showed a behind the scenes photo
shoot with soap actress Michelle Keegan. In this video you got to see her
whilst she was having her photo shoot done for FHM. From what I could see from
this video her shoot did involve her being clothed, but in quite suggestive
poses. This was probably quite low key for FHM. I did notice that Michelle
looked like she was having fun whilst doing the shoot, which suggests that
although FHM is sometimes looked down upon, people do have fun whilst doing
photo shoots etc for them.
Nuts is
another magazine which is specifically aimed at teenage boys and young men. It
seems a bit raunchier then FHM, which could be seen as a bad thing from a
feminist view. It features a lot more suggestive images, with most of the models
in the magazine, half naked or naked. Hardly any are clothed. Nuts seems a lot
more demeaning to women, then FHM was. It definitely is a lot more hardcore. On
the website there is an article or a competition called “Assess my Breasts”
(Nuts, 2013) which is where females upload images of their breasts onto the
site and then men ‘assess’ them and give them a mark out of ten. This can be
dubbed as softcore porn. From looking through these images, most of the girls
who have taken the images are in their late teens and early twenties. This can
be seen as quite wrong, because what would possess a young woman to take a
photo of her naked breasts and then put it online? She doesn’t know who would
be looking at that image. She is downgrading herself and saying to all the
readers of Nuts that she has no self-respect and is an object. That will stay
with her forever and she will never be able to get away from it. Another
demeaning article on Nuts is entitled “Thongs of Praise” (Nuts, 2013), which is
where they are praising the Thong. “You've got to love thongs - very few things
show off a lovely posterior quite as well as that clever bit of material”
(Nuts, 2013). A woman’s underwear should be private for her and her partner,
not to be shown nationwide. This article is more image based than word based.
It is just images of female models, topless, just wearing thongs. What is so
special about this? There is nothing special about models that are basically
naked modelling underwear. Sometimes I wonder what made these females get into
that career. Sometimes I think it must be for the money, as I would never want
to glamour model for a lads magazine. Nuts also upload some videos onto sites
such as YouTube, although they haven’t done it for a few years. One video I
came across was “Nuts Video: Lucy Pinder” (nuts, 2010). This is sort of the
same style of video that FHM do, which is a behind the scenes at a photo shoot.
However, this one definitely was a lot raunchier. It had a lot more close up
scenes of parts of her body such as her breasts and bottom. Lucy Pinder also
looked like she wasn’t really enjoying it. Which makes you think, was she
enjoying the shoot or not? In FHM Michelle Keegan looked like she was having
fun, Lucy Pinder, not so much. Maybe she was regretting her decision to do the
shoot for the magazine or maybe she just wasn’t feeling it. We’ll never know
really. Nuts is definitely a lot more
raunchier and suggestive then FHM.
Overall, both of these lads’ mags’ can be seen as taboo from a feminist view. They both downgrade women to a certain extent and make them out to be objects, when in reality they are so much more. Out of both of the magazines, I’d say, in my opinion that Nuts was the worst one, as it had a lot more female nudity, a lot more articles about parts of the female that should be private and a bit more participation from females from the public. FHM on the other hand did have a few competitions involving celebrities and members of the public, it was much more softer and not so raunchy. It’s safe to say that these magazines will be around for years to come, but maybe in the future they will fade away.
References
Jenainati,
C. and Groves, J. (2007) Introducing
feminism. Thriplow: Icon
Storey, J.
(2009) Cultural theory and popular
culture. Harlow, England: Pearson Longman
Fhm.com
(2013) FHM Men's Magazine | Sexy Girls,
News & Men's Fashion | FHM.com. [online] Available at: http://www.fhm.com
[Accessed: 29 Apr 2013]
TheFreeDictionary.com
(2013) minx. [online] Available at:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/minx [Accessed: 29 Apr 2013]
FHMWeb
(2013) Behind the Sexy Scenes on Michelle
Keegan's FHM Cover Shoot. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zBKRDZZnGs
[Accessed 29 Apr 2013]
Nuts.co.uk
(2013) Nuts | Topless Girls, Web Games,
Funny Videos, Glamour Models, Spambank, Nuts Magazine. [online] Available
at: http://www.nuts.co.uk [Accessed: 29 Apr 2013]
Nuts (2010) Nuts Video: Lucy Pinder. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poVAEeUhFJU
[Accessed 29 Apr 2013]
By Amy Rush Da Silva
