‘Much has been made of the ‘new’ postmodern breed of magazines, from lads’ mags to celebrity glossies with their tongue-in-cheek versions of conventional gender roles, but how far do our current lifestyle magazines really challenge the well-worn stereotypes they claim to undermine?’
Both ‘Nuts’ and ‘Loaded’, two postmodern male lifestyle magazines have come to realise that ‘sex sells’. By styling their magazines around this premise, the manner in which women are represented remain demeaning. Both magazines reinforce the theory of the ‘male gaze’, and in doing so fail to challenge the well-worn stereotypes they claim to undermine.
Until the release of ‘Zoo’ and ‘Nuts’, two highly successful weekly male lifestyle magazines, ‘Loaded’ was very conservative and moderate in their representation of women. However, to compete with their challengers it became evident the magazine had to comply to the idea of sex selling. Whilst ‘Loaded’ has always used provocative images of femininity to sell itself, these images have seen a drastic increase in sex appeal and nudity. In doing this, females are represented as sex objects for men to look at, in turn complying to ‘Laura Mulvey’s’ theory of the ‘male gaze’. To emphasise this representation, the magazine often uses vibrant colours on it’s front covers and combine this with both long angle and high angle shots of the females, and by doing this show women to be inferior to men as the readers of the magazines will be looking down to the women.
‘Nuts’ employs almost identical representations of women in their magazines, particularly in its front covers. Launched in 2004, ‘Nuts’ is an ideal example of a postmodern magazine which fails to challenge ‘well-worn stereotypes’. Instead, it styles itself around the premise of ‘sex sells’. This shows that the magazine believes its target audience is only interested in sex. In turn, it complies with the ‘male gaze’ by regularly using sexually provocative and increasingly nude images of women on its front covers. Emphasis is placed on these women as their image is the largest and most noticeable object on the front cover. This is to immediately grab the attention of its male audience when on the top shelf. Furthermore, the colour of the masthead is red, in turn connoting sex and impurity and strongly reinforcing the concept of ‘sex sells’.
At the time of the launch of ‘Nuts’, ‘Loaded’ used the tag ‘for men who should know better’. Whilst sexually provocative images were used on its front covers, the fact that this tag was used shows the magazine acknowledged its content may be viewed in a negative and demeaning way and in turn was encouraging its audience to enjoy the stereotypes without personally holding them as a fact. However, ‘Loaded’ dropped this tag a year later in 2005 after the huge and ironic success of ‘Nuts’. This shows that the use of sexual stereotypes, consistently used in ‘Nuts’, had now become acceptable and encouraging the audience to challenge the content they were viewing was not necessary any more.
Until 2004, ‘Loaded’ proved that the new post modern breed of magazines were capable of challenging the ‘well-worn’ stereotypes. However, with the launch and unwarranted success of magazines such as ‘Nuts’ and ‘Zoo’, it became evident that ‘sex sells’. ‘Loaded’ in turn styled its magazine around this premise, and in doing began to conform to stereotypical representations of women and more importantly, failed to challenge the stereotypes it initially claimed to undermine.
