ABSTRACT
In her book OverLoaded: Popular Culture and the Future of Feminism (2000), Imelda Whelehan argued that magazines like Loaded, FHM and Maxim are an attempt to override the message of feminism, promoting a laddish world where women are sex objects, and changes in gender roles can be dismissed with an ironic joke. Whelehan recognises that these magazines may not have straightforward effects – she notes that ‘to assume that these readers internalise the lad credo in its entirety is to underestimate the uses to which popular culture is put by individual consumers’ (p. 6). Neverthless, she says, ‘it is impossible to ignore the growth of this image and its depiction of masculinity . . . its prevalence offers a timely warning to any woman who felt that gender relations were now freely negotiable’ (ibid.). It’s a persuasive and worrying argument, especially when illustrated with some unpleasant sexist quotes from Loaded. However, whilst I would not want to defend the dumb excesses of many of the men’s titles, this remains a rather superficial analysis, based on a caricature of what modern men’s magazines are about. Their ‘depiction of masculinity’ can be regressive and cringe-worthy on some pages, but overall is not quite as one-dimensional as
Whelehan suggests. Furthermore, Whelehan’s assumptions of how the magazines will have an impact on men’s identities is too casually damning and pessimistic.
