Loaded, Nuts, etc.

Blush_01

Excuse my laziness, I've only read the first page of the thread.

I put those lads mags in the same category as junk like HEAT and its ilk when it comes to negative imagery for teenage girls. In fact, the magazines aimed at teenage girls - teen vogue, sugar, kiss, shout, whatever else they're flogging these days - are more damaging. Most kids and teenagers don't look at naked women on the cover of a magazine as something to aspire to. The female role models paraded in magazines AIMED at teenage girls are supposed to be aspirational characters, and have a much greater impact on body image etc. That's the truly scary thing.

TBH, I think it's a bit of an overreaction. If those kids have access to the internet while unsupervised, then they have ample opportunity to see much worse if they're so inclined.

dotsman

panda100 wrote: »

Some feminist groups in England have started succesful campaigns against the prominet display of 'lads mags' in shops. An intresting read : http://charliegrrl.wordpress.com/lads-mags/.

Pardon the pun, but that girl has issues:)

Lockstep

Kids coming across porn is nothing new.
Bill Bryson remembers all the youngsters spying on porn in the grocery shops when Playboy came out in the 50s.

Can't say I see the problem with this to be honest.
When I was 13, there were more than enough girls my age doing a lot more than showing breasts.

hippiechickie wrote: »

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Ah yes, the old "they don't share my attitudes to sex/nudity so they are immature kids"

Kya1976 wrote: »

not sure if this is just because I'm not Irish and have had a different upbringing, ie never went to mass etc etc... but anyways it doesn't bother me in the slightest, I just don't think its a big deal. I remember in school part of my sex education was to watch porn, again not a big deal, none of our parents minded it either....

I agree.
I grew up on the continent and attitudes to sex are completely different. I saw stuff on network tv around 11pm that would be viewed as extremely hardcore porn here. Noone gave a damn. ANd I would also say that men and women on the continent have a far more healthy attitude to sex than a lot of people I see over here. I really wouldn't say there's any correlation between the porn and women being objectified.

panda100 wrote: »

I was in the Easons today looking at some magazines and passed this mag and did a double take when I saw it!More so because their bodies look so fake and disgusting to touch,I couldnt think of anything less erotic!

Agreed.
I think a problem here is that (to quote from the Jam) that the public wants what the public gets. Peer pressure seems to have influence over what guys view as attractive and if the media is putting out images of women like stick insects with tits like zeppelins and lips like a baboon's backside then they will be viewed as desirable.
However, I do see few guys who view such women as relationship material. Most seem happy to have a **** over some plastic girl in a lads mag and are happy with their pale, average sized dark haired girlfriend.

Galvasean

panda100 wrote: »

Some feminist groups in England have started succesful campaigns against the prominet display of 'lads mags' in shops. An intresting read : http://charliegrrl.wordpress.com/lads-mags/.

In one of those pictures the lads mags are on the bottom shelf next to the Premier League sticker albums in the section marked 'Computers'. Now call me cynical but it looks to me as if some overzealous feminist has placed them there for the sake of a good photo.
While I'm here let me just state that I would be in favour of 'top shelf' legislation.

JC 2K3

panda100 wrote: »

Some feminist groups in England have started succesful campaigns against the prominet display of 'lads mags' in shops. An intresting read : http://charliegrrl.wordpress.com/lads-mags/.

Jesus, that charliegrrl is one hell of a misandrist...

dfx-

hippiechickie wrote: »

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If only

I think the thread has turned from "how dare they see it on sale in a shop near a school" drama to the glaringly obvious "13 yr olds reading this is a worry". Big difference from the initial rant.

lawstudent99

hi Hippiechickie thanks for the interesting post. As a law student I currently have an research interest in rape where a lot of interesting material is available on pornography. As a lot of researchers are, I am interested in the relationship between rape and pornography. What is interesting is that most people forget Women's 'equality' as we see it today is a fairly new invention.

Structually a lot of inequality still exists. Without meaning to ramble (us students don't get much space to chat about these things) I perceive 'soft-core' magazines as part of the continuum of sexual violence and continued subjugation of women-the women on the magazines could be anyone, shes not a person with special qualities and talents or as psychologists would term 'the individual'.

They are a threat to real sexuality including that of teenage girls as they de-personify the women and reconstruct her sexuality in masculine terms. The real danger with these magazines is that they deny those looking at them any possibility of reimagining a womens experience of sexuality-which of course any healthy perspective of sex would provide. It takes two to tango!I could continue on about how pornography features in rape trials but this post is long enough!

Permabear

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Permabear

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Galvasean

donegalfella wrote: »

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FHM went back in time and turned the girls into sluts?

LolaLuv

donegalfella wrote: »

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Maybe it did have an effect, but as long as I'm comfortable with who I am now, why should it matter?

dolliemix

You tell em Pilly Pen:pac:

Alicat

donegalfella wrote: »

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So these girls must have been looking at Nuts or some equivelant? That's the only possible explanation for their behaviour? A 'dirty' magazine?

Get real, I would say a more plausible explanation would be that neither their parents or any other responsible adult in their lives bothered to teach them about sex, sexuality, their bodies, relationships, self-respect etc.

LightningBolt

lawstudent99 wrote: »

hi Hippiechickie thanks for the interesting post. As a law student I currently have an research interest in rape where a lot of interesting material is available on pornography. As a lot of researchers are, I am interested in the relationship between rape and pornography. What is interesting is that most people forget Women's 'equality' as we see it today is a fairly new invention.

Structually a lot of inequality still exists. Without meaning to ramble (us students don't get much space to chat about these things) I perceive 'soft-core' magazines as part of the continuum of sexual violence and continued subjugation of women-the women on the magazines could be anyone, shes not a person with special qualities and talents or as psychologists would term 'the individual'.

They are a threat to real sexuality including that of teenage girls as they de-personify the women and reconstruct her sexuality in masculine terms. The real danger with these magazines is that they deny those looking at them any possibility of reimagining a womens experience of sexuality-which of course any healthy perspective of sex would provide. It takes two to tango!I could continue on about how pornography features in rape trials but this post is long enough!

This thread has gone way off topic for my liking. Anyone up on a rape charge is in my opinion likely to have a fascination with porn to some extent. It does not prove that porn is dangerous, merely that rape offenders are more likely to watch it than your normal viewer. I'd assume that in rape cases, offenders would be more likely to watch hard core porn as opposed to soft core.

Has any woman on here actually read a male magazine that's aimed at the 18-25 market? It's pure drivel and there's very little in describing sexual acts whenever I've read it.

EamonnKeane

taconnol wrote: »

That's fair enough - you're allowed to react as you wish.
I'm afraid I don't agree with you that gender divides have been successfully vanquished just yet. I don't consider feminism dead just yet.

Look at this ad for example from australia (Surprise surprise..):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=504OzK-VZjA

The part that's missing at the beginning shows him being frightened of a spider and suddenly boobs emerging from his chest. He has to kill a shark and drag it home (and drink some solo) before they disappear and he is a man again.

Actually you can see it better on their homepage: http://www.mancans.com.au/

Um, doesn't pretty much every ad set in a domestic situation portray the husband as a bumbling idiot? There's a list here http://www.askmen.com/top_10/entertainment_300/327_top_10_list.html

And I like you complaining about prejudice, yet saying "surprise surprise" when those darn Aussies are sexist. Because you know what those people are like.

CeilingCat

View Profile wrote: »

Meh its nothing a 13 year old girl would look twice at.

It's exactly the kind of thing a 13 year old girl would look at, scrutinise, obsess about and develop body image issues over.

dolliemix wrote: »

Hippie Chick ....at the end of the day it is your responsibilty as a parent to make sure that your daughter understands and is comfortable with her image and sexuality.....not the shopkeeper. If you can sit down with your daughter and explain to her that some women choose to become topless models for whatever reason and people choose to look at these images for whatever reason she is more likely to understand that these are adult choices...and she wont grow up being angry with people who do. I personally would not like to see my daughter celebrate or wish to go into topless modelling etc but at the same time I would hate for her to be embarrassed by these images or the idea of them. You would be better off just laughing it off with her ....top-shelf, bottom shelf whatever ...like everyone else is saying these images are always going to be around.

+1
Unfortunately, a lot of parents nowadays are of the opinion that 'sure they're going to see it anyway, what can we do about it?' The onus is on parents now more than ever to make sure they educate their kids and make sure they can grasp the concept of these images being a result of marketing and magazine sales targets, and not an accurate depiction of what women should be like or what men want.

dotsman wrote: »

and as such would expect a bunch of 13-year old girls at the disco to look and act like this.

They do. My son has been to a few underage discos (or whatever the hell they're calling them these days), and he's come home with horrendous stories about what the girls of 12/13 were getting up to (white-washed to make himself look like a saint of course :P)... He was a little older than these girls and he was genuinely disgusted by their carry on... I had the dubious pleasure of seeing them all lining up outside waiting to go in, and the girls were in exactly the kind of get-ups you'd see on the women in the aforementioned magazines. Completely inappropriate for 12 and 13 year old girls.... call me old fashioned.... :mad:... but these are the images that they feel they have to emulate and live up to.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hold with sheltering children too much because it's counter productive in this day and age IMO, if you shelter them too much they'll be sitting ducks when they do get out into the big wide world. But having images like those casually strewn around does impact on a young girls' view of self image and of how men view women. I'm surprised there aren't more guys on here giving out about the fact that the media give them so little credit for intelligence tbh.

Lads, you'll understand when you have daughters... and probably not before.

Dudess

Am I alone in thinking that a society where 12 and 13-year-olds are performing oral sex casually, is a sexually repressed society? As in, the product of a society that preaches about sex being "wrong" and "dirty" etc resulting in such rather warped behaviour?

Permabear

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Lockstep

donegalfella wrote: »

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No.
Please enlighten me.

Puddleduck

I dont see a problem with this. Young girls are exposed to this kind of thing anyway, read any girly mag, even those aimed at teenage girls and youll see issues about sex, so assuming that all girls that age dont know about it is naive. Thats not to say I dont think there should be restrictions on it, I think they should be top shelf, but not hidden away. The arguement that girls are seeing these images and then going out and doing what they see is ridiculous, at the end of the day these girls are doing what they want, if they didnt see it in magazines, they would see it on tv. Its up to parents to teach their child the rights and wrongs about it. To teach them that just because you dont follow a trend dosent make you a bad person. Teach them self respect.
I think this kind of culture is a result of being oppressed for so long, intead of it being out there and generally accepted, it still has a air of its dirty and wrong therefore exciting about it. I think we went a bit crazy with this new found freedom and now its everywhere.

Kya1976

kickoutthejams wrote: »

I agree.
I grew up on the continent and attitudes to sex are completely different. I saw stuff on network tv around 11pm that would be viewed as extremely hardcore porn here. Noone gave a damn. ANd I would also say that men and women on the continent have a far more healthy attitude to sex than a lot of people I see over here. I really wouldn't say there's any correlation between the porn and women being objectified.

yup porn would have been shown on the 'regular' channels at home, usually after midnight. I think you become somewhat desensitized to it, like me and my mates would from the age of around 14 have watched porn together on a regular basis.....We were just like any teenager would be, mad curious about sex....

hippiechickie wrote: »

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couldn't disagree more.... None of my fiends, me included, turned in to promiscuous teenagers after reading porn mags or after watching porn......

Dudess

donegalfella wrote: »

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I don't think it's as black and white as that. Why do I hear so often that rates of teen pregnancies and STDs are much lower in sexually liberated countries like Holland, Sweden and Norway? The age of consent in (largely) liberal California is 18... in bible-bashing South Carolina, it's 13 for girls.

Lockstep

Dudess wrote: »

in bible-bashing South Carolina, it's 13 for girls.

:eek::eek::eek:

Robbie23

I really think you're making a song and dance over nothing here. Those mags are nothing more than a glamourized page 3.

who007

I never bother with those mags.. I just don't understand people's obsession with football. Why they have to tease you with tits then wham - a mag full of stuff about kicking a leather ball around a field...

Dudess

kickoutthejams wrote: »

:eek::eek::eek:

Sorry, that should be 14.

GreeBo

hippiechickie wrote: »

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Why do you keep making a point of saying "next to their school"?
Do you think there should be different "rules" based on your proximity to something? Thats a short trip away from a red light zone milady.

Permabear

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paperclip2

Terodil wrote: »

Honestly? How is 'looking at a photo' equivalent to 'having the person in the photo'? I really think you are taking it a bit far here.
.

Just chucking this out there,:) http://medical.merriam-webster.com/medical/scopophilia

Star Lord

hippiechickie wrote: »

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It's funny, I have seen the magazine cover in this thread and in the shop, and nowehere did I see any "fondling"

hippiechickie wrote: »

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Like if you drink, then *WHAM* you're an alcoholic...

taconnol wrote: »

And what they learn is not just what women look like naked but what women are "supposed" to look like, how submissive and available they're supposed to be etc.

I'm sorry taconnol, but that's nonsense. As a teen (like most other guys) I saw magazines like this, I saw pornography, and I do not have any ridiculous ideas about what women are "supposed" to look like, submissiveness or availability. This is very much like the above quote by hippiechickie, where you assume that if someone sees such a thing that they must think this about the person, and that in turn would lead to having ideas and ideals form in your head, which is really not the case.

taconnol wrote: »

What I mean by available is that all you have to do is pay €5 or whatever and you have her. She's there, naked in front of the reader. The reader does not have to impress her, be found attractive by her etc. She is smiling, inviting the reader in. Her purpose is to please the reader, capitulate.

It'd take something badly wrong with a teenage boy to not be able to differenciate between a photograph in a magazine and a real life girl/woman. To form such opinions would also take some kind of mental imbalance, as it would to carry these opinions over from a 2 dimensional magazine to a real woman. If such problems exist in the mind of the viewer/reader, then that is a completely seperate issue, and one that would require the person to get help. This would not be the fault of the magazine.

Similar points can be made about movies, books or games, they have at various points in history been scapegoated and villainised by people who are more willing to point the finger at something simple being wrong, rather than at someone having something wrong with them.