Alex Talks To Gen Z About Lads Mags
Alex Talks To Gen Z About Lads Mags
Transcript
00:00 How bad were the lads' mags, really?
00:02 The recent allegations against Russell Brand,
00:04 which he vehemently denies,
00:05 have left us all looking back at early noughties culture and wincing.
00:09 Of course, it wasn't just publications like Loaded, FHM, Nuts and Zoo.
00:14 The whole media landscape was geared towards critiquing,
00:17 objectifying or chastising women.
00:20 Basically, as a young woman living in that time,
00:22 you were being nagged on an industrial scale.
00:24 This was the era of size zero and heat magazine circle of shame,
00:28 and the worst part was that if you dared to object,
00:30 you were branded a prude or a massive bore.
00:32 But even if it wasn't just the lads' mags,
00:35 they do remain the most potent symbol of those toxic times.
00:38 So, how does someone who didn't experience them
00:41 the first time around feel about them?
00:43 Freya, you would have been how old in, say, 2005?
00:47 I think I would have been five years old.
00:49 - OK. - 2005.
00:50 So, I was... In 2006, I went to university,
00:52 so this is very much like the era that I was growing up in.
00:56 We've got a selection of lads' mags
00:58 that I found in my boyfriend's teenage bedroom.
01:00 Nice. A lot of boobs here.
01:03 There are a lot of boobs.
01:04 I think that's basically the most obvious part.
01:06 It's like, even though this is a load of magazines for men,
01:09 it's all naked women.
01:11 This is a bad one.
01:12 "Sexual harassment at work. Not getting enough?"
01:15 - I still love that. - And this is a job...
01:18 This is a website that's listing jobs.
01:20 - Oh, my God. - Where you can go...
01:22 So, if you can't... Maybe...
01:23 I don't know if it's people that want to be...
01:25 Supposedly want to be sexually harassed more
01:26 or want to do more harassing, but...
01:28 - I think that's... - Oh, my God, this is shocking.
01:31 I mean, in terms of the kind of...
01:32 The humour that was around at the time,
01:34 that's a really good example.
01:36 But, like, how... What do you...
01:40 Like, what jumps out at you most if you're looking through these?
01:46 So, we've got a... The context page open right now.
01:49 Let's have a look.
01:51 I mean, literally everything is about sex.
01:54 "The world's freakiest stories.
01:55 Ladies' confessions when women gleefully admit to their antics."
01:59 Then we've got...
01:59 "The laboratory of love.
02:04 Ridiculously, Grubh becomes a lesbian."
02:06 Oh, my gosh.
02:07 You would just never see this stuff today.
02:09 Well, I don't... Maybe I'm reading the wrong magazines.
02:13 Yeah, because I'm definitely used to seeing...
02:14 I don't know, in a Daily Mail or a Sun headline,
02:18 someone being commented on in a bikini.
02:20 But I think, like, the sheer level of, like, sex
02:24 that is in these so explicitly is really, really...
02:26 Every single page is about sex.
02:29 I mean, yeah, the idea that everything was about sex
02:32 has definitely...
02:32 Was definitely just felt the whole time.
02:36 I mean, I remember going out at university
02:40 and you just knew you'd be groped on every night out.
02:43 And it was kind of... You didn't really think about it.
02:45 You're like, "I know this is going to happen."
02:48 And afterwards, after it happened, you'd be like, "Oh, well, whatever."
02:51 But it was just so standard.
02:52 Like, every single night out, you'd be groped multiple times.
02:55 Because people, men specifically, felt really entitled to your body
03:00 and felt like they had this...
03:02 Felt it was just kind of fun and kind of...
03:04 Yeah, consent was just not anything that anyone talked about.
03:09 And I think when you look at some of these kind of...
03:12 Extreme...
03:15 This one's about kind of hazardous, extreme sex.
03:20 Hazardous hump ahead.
03:22 I mean, I feel like bad things happened today,
03:25 but I would hope that people feel like they can at least...
03:28 They'd be shocked by someone groping them, right?
03:29 We saw with the World Cup, it happened.
03:32 But I know it was the Spanish reporter got groped on TV
03:35 and everyone was really outraged, which...
03:37 That's progress, right?
03:39 Yeah. Well, I think this is interesting.
03:40 I think outrage has gotten us to a certain point
03:45 because I think that's what a lot of the #MeToo movement was about.
03:47 It was looking at the kind of behaviours
03:49 that we just took for granted for so long
03:52 and then applying a degree of outrage to them
03:54 and being like, "Maybe this isn't OK.
03:57 "Maybe it isn't OK to be kind of casually groped
03:59 "every time you leave your house."
04:01 OK, so what do you think?
04:04 Are they as bad as you think or...
04:05 Do they have some merit?
04:07 I am shocked because I feel like I've been introduced
04:11 to a subculture that I've never seen before.
04:14 But I think I don't really use this kind of content ever.
04:18 So I don't know how it would shape up to today.
04:21 I feel like... I was surprised,
04:23 but in some ways it does feel quite tongue-in-cheek.
04:25 I totally get what you mean.
04:27 It's like... It is kind of tongue-in-cheek.
04:28 It's almost like Carry On, but with, like, a dash of misogyny.
04:33 I mean, Carry On was kind of a big dash of misogyny anyway.
04:36 But I think you're right.
04:37 I guess I'm unsurprised that we're hearing all these
04:39 sexual assault allegations coming out of the woodwork
04:42 when this is, like...
04:44 This was such a common form of media that everyone was reading.
04:47 It does feel like, even if now things are happening
04:49 on the internet that we don't know about,
04:50 they're definitely not being given approval
04:53 by, like, big publications that you can buy in Asda
04:56 when you're checking out.
04:57 So on that side of things, I guess I'm shocked
05:01 at how normal these must have been,
05:03 how normalised.
05:05 That is surprising to me.
05:06 Yeah, I mean, objectification was basically
05:08 a way of life for all people, men and women.
05:13 And I think a lot of women would have said
05:15 that they were complicit in it at the time
05:17 because they didn't have a choice.
05:19 So everyone who was on this magazine was like,
05:22 "This was what was on offer to them
05:24 "as a way of promoting themselves."
05:26 And you could either play the game
05:28 or you could just not work.
05:29 So I think in that respect,
05:33 how pervasive it was is kind of quite shocking.
05:38 But at the same time, when you now compare it
05:41 to the kind of industrial-scale hatred
05:44 that you see online,
05:46 it's kind of, seems a bit more kind of fun
05:49 and tongue-in-cheek.
05:50 Yeah, well, thanks for introducing me
05:53 to a crazy part of the noughties.
05:55 What a wild time.