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Evening Standard
  • 9/25/2023
Gen Z: how bad were lads mag really?
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,
00:34 they do remain the most potent symbol of those toxic times.
00:38 So, how does someone who didn't experience them
00:40 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 I mean, literally everything is about sex.
01:40 "The world's freakiest stories.
01:41 "Ladies' confessions,
01:42 "when women gleefully admit to their antics."
01:45 Then we've got...
01:45 "The laboratory of love.
01:50 "Ridiculously, Grubh becomes a lesbian."
01:52 Oh, my gosh.
01:53 You would just never see this stuff today.
01:55 Maybe I'm reading the wrong magazines.
01:59 I mean, yeah, the idea that everything was about sex
02:02 was definitely just felt the whole time.
02:06 What do you think?
02:07 Are they as bad as you think?
02:08 Or did they have some merit?
02:11 I am shocked because I feel like I've been introduced
02:14 to a subculture that I've never seen before.
02:17 But I think I don't really use this kind of content ever.
02:21 So I don't know how it would shape up to today.
02:24 I feel like I was surprised,
02:26 but in some ways it does feel quite tongue-in-cheek.

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