The death of the Lads Mags didn't just hurt their audience: it hurt women too. In this post we offer our thoughts on the positive influence #LadsMags provided its readers and society.
Whilst the slow demise of the lads mags can be attributed to the rise in electronic media and online content, part of the demise can also be attributed to the persistent attack on the product by self-ascribed feminists. You can search google for article after article relating to how horrible these magazines are, and how they perpetuate sexism.
Yet with the erotic - never pornographic - lads mags now lost to time (obviously you can buy back issues at our web-store but you get the idea!) men are forced to enter the internet market where everything is.. far more extreme and actually sexist. The lads mags were cheeky and childish; the internet is aggressive and all-or-nothing
What feminists don't realise is that readers were far more likely to idolise and almost worship the women of #Loaded, Nuts and Zoo et al than see them as just pieces of flesh. The likes of #LucyPinder and #KeeleyHazel were seen almost as goddesses in their own right (and their pay-cheques often reflected this... until the lads mags went out of publication, well done feminists!). Yes, the boobs were there, but the humanising interviews and cheeky humour was there too. And let's not forget that lads mags celebrated women of all sizes, rather than the cardboard stick-women of the modern fashion and current celebrity world.
Men - lads - wanted a girlfriend just like the girls in these magazines: and they wanted to get to know them. They didn't see them as merely sexually desirable but as companions and friends: yes a fantasy, but a plausible one that they tried to achieve in "real life". These days the expected standards women are held to as presented in both the media and pornography are wildly high: being overtly cosmetic and skinny, or hyper-sexual and prostituted (respectfully).: Modern women don't want to have to project the image of a high-end, low-fat hollywood actress or nymphomaniac to get a mate: they just want to be themselves. And that's what lads mags celebrated: the normal woman.
Sadly these magazines have faded into history now, and though www.lads-mags.com supplies old issues of Front, #Maxim and the like, there will never be newly published issues and no new "innocent" glamour shoots. Instead there is only the extremes and overt. And many models are now, as a result of this decline, faced with either being unemployed or having to engage in the "extreme": whereas before they'd be paid £10,000 and often more for a few topless photos in Nuts. Many celebrity actresses' careers and profiles were launched in the pages of Nuts or Loaded let's not forget either.
Sad times.