The lad mag industry—a business that we’re somewhat familiar with—gets a dressing down in the UK Daily Mail by a former Esquire editor named Rosie Boycott. (With a name like that, is it any surprise that she’s pissed off about something?) The general thesis is that Nuts, Zoo Weekly, Maxim, Loaded, FHM, etc. are nothing but exploitative trash that marginalizes women and perpetuates negative attitudes toward them in young men … but that maybe the women who willingly drop their bikinis to get a spot in the glossy pages are at least partly responsible.
We don’t want to rehash the whole “stupid sluts/empowered women” debate here—you can read it yourself and make up your own mind, but we do take issue with one particular comment. She writes:
“No one – at the risk of looking oldfashioned and stuffy – is willing to stand up and question current behaviour.
Really? No one? Because from where we sit there’s pretty much an entire industry devoted to doing just that. Hardly a day goes by that we don’t stumble across someone who is wringing their hands over what MySpace, Girls Gone Wild, and beer commercials are doing to our youth. They may or may not have point, but if you can’t hear them making it then you clearly aren’t listening.
· “Women blame lads’ mags for sexual exploitation – yet are they are just as guilty?” (dailymail.co.uk)
· Related: “Feeling Sexually-Objectified? It Could Be Your Own Damn Fault” (Jezebel)
