A warm summer afternoon in the late 1990s and in the London office of FHM Magazine we are celebrating.
It has just been announced that the so-called Jungs magazine has generated a monthly turnover of 750,000 and the staff are flocking from desks full of free gadgets and shiny photos – many young women posing provocatively in skimpy underwear – and from the pub back to it open the champagne.
I also grab a glass and pause from writing an interview with the hosts of The Girlie Show (to accompany photos of them dressed suggestively in skimpy school uniforms).
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the men’s magazine revolution that began in 1993 with the relaunch of FHM, a previously boring quarterly fashion magazine. Then came the explosion of offbeat jokes, soft porn and stunts called Loaded – catchphrase “good job dude”. !’ —followed by Nuts, Zoo, Front, and many more excitable, short-lived imitators.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the revolution in men’s magazines, which began with the relaunch of FHM. Flic Everett (pictured) asks if those magazines had a much more sinister influence than we ever imagined?
All good, healthy fun – or so we thought. But could the influence of those extremely mischievous magazines, where women came packaged like human ready meals and “talking about your feelings” meant brutally insulting one another, have had a much more malevolent influence than we ever imagined?”
I ask myself this question more often than I would like, because between 1996 and 2001 I was a regular author for FHM. As a 25-year-old single parent with a three-year-old son, I was delighted to write for such a successful glossy magazine.
However, I see things differently now. In their mix of “banter,” fast cars, and the objectification of women — someone once counted 73 naked women in an issue of Nuts — it seems to me that men’s magazines, while never advocating abuse, sell a version of masculinity that doesn’t too far removed from what is represented today by toxic online influencers like Andrew Tate, currently incarcerated in a Romanian prison on alleged rape and human trafficking offences.
Were these “fun” magazines the start of a new era of misogyny?
I was an interviewer for FHM and was sometimes drafted into the office as a vacation cover. Tasks included quizzing Playboy bunnies about their sex lives and swapping lives with a guy for a day, which meant he got his legs waxed and me leering at girls in a pub. I interviewed cover stars and sometimes wrote Girls on the Couch, where ordinary (but always attractive) women debated sexual etiquette. I worked on the infamous “High Street Honeys,” an annual contest where guys sent in pictures of their girlfriends — not necessarily with permission — and readers voted on the sexiest.
We convinced ourselves that this was all part of the dominant culture of lads and ladettes enjoying themselves in the pre-internet days when it was normal to wait a whole month to see a photo of a celebrity, imagined in their underpants.
The Ladettes have said they’re happy to be “on an equal footing” with men, drink as much as they do, and behave just as badly. But of course we were not equal in the eyes of society.
Flic was an interviewer for FHM and was sometimes drafted into the office as a vacation cover. Responsibilities included quizzing Playboy bunnies about their sex lives and swapping lives with a guy for a day, which meant getting a leg wax and leering at girls in a pub
In fact, it was a deeply sexist time, and these were often deeply sexist publications. Girl power meant nothing more than women wearing Wonderbras into the pub and drinking eight pints alongside the men. It meant TV presenter Gail Porter’s bare bottom was projected onto the Houses of Parliament without her permission. Now I can see a clear path leading from those attitudes and obsessions to men like Tate, 36, whose videos on YouTube and TikTok contain a far more dangerous and overt misogyny — and yet were among the most-watched in the world last year.
The boom in men’s magazines coincided with the teenage years of men like Tate and may have influenced their evolving outlook.
Consider the division of women into two broad, dehumanized stereotypes on these pages: either trophies – the willing, naked blonde – or nags – the whining, dowdy girlfriend who doesn’t want her guy to have fun.
The headlines of the time tell the story. Von Zoo: “Win your girlfriend a £4,000 boob job!” – because her body clearly wasn’t good enough as it was. From FHM: ’Sex toys: (Keep them still while football is on).’
And in a deeply uncomfortable dig at the late respected politician Mo Mowlam: “The FHM Sex Awards! … sweet FA for Mowlam.” Sex has always sold, but men’s magazines normalized the notion that women existed for men’s sexual pleasure and brought the mainstream exposure of still-premium pornography on par.
But while the boys’ magazines overlaid their sexism with edgy wit, men like Tate give up the fun entirely. Repelled by Big Brother for making offensive comments in 2016, he quickly gained an online following and began offering paid classes and memberships through his Hustler’s University website.
Teenagers and young men were drawn to the depiction of his “ultra-masculine, ultra-luxurious” lifestyle and unrepentant misogyny in worrying numbers. A survey by advocacy group Hope Not Hate last year found that eight out of 10 boys aged 16 to 17 had been involved with his content.
Tate suggested that rape victims “have a certain responsibility” when they were assaulted, saying women “belong in the home” and calling them “property” of men. It obviously goes a lot further than any other men’s magazine from the 1990s — but it’s certainly fair to conclude that they’re all promoting the same deeply sexist culture. “It makes sense that the attitudes promoted in popular men’s magazines had an impact on readers’ views of women,” says Catherine Hallissey, a psychologist.
This is supported by research, she adds. A 2012 study published in the Journal of Psychology found that “some journals targeting young men normalize extreme sexist views by presenting those views in a mainstream context.” Sharing quotes with male readers, the authors found that ‘young men identified more with derogatory quotes about women from recent men’s magazines and from interviews with convicted rapists when those quotes were attributed to men’s magazines than when they were attributed to rapists’ .
They also found that both men and women had trouble figuring out whether the quotes came from sex offenders or magazines.
Fiercely misogynistic online subcultures like the incel (involuntary celibacy) movement often rely on the notion that attractive women are shallow and sex-obsessed, an idea perhaps unknowingly promoted by the later men’s magazines struggling to gain their place in the to keep shelves with as many naked women as they could cram onto the pages.
Now, as an older feminist, I am ashamed of my role, albeit small, in promoting this deeply male-centric view of the world.
But from an early age I enjoyed the work and I liked my colleagues. The men in the office were witty and educated, if a little pleased with themselves.
Many of those who worked on such magazines still insist they were doing it for respectful fun. Charlotte Crisp was Loaded’s deputy editor in 2001 and says: “The vast majority of the staff were male. They were smart, funny, nerdy and treated me with the utmost respect. The magazine was cheeky and irreverent, like being in a pub with the funniest crowd you’ve ever met.
However, she admits that “the clothes fell off our own models because we had to compete with other magazines.”
In fact, their shelf life was limited. The rise of the internet, coupled with the “sex sells” race to the bottom — “more birds, fewer words,” as late-era Loaded editor Martin Daubney described an advertiser’s demands — meant that readers and the better paying advertisers were deterred.
By the end of 2015 Loaded, FHM, Nuts, Zoo, Maxim and most others had closed or only gone online. I stopped writing for FHM long before that.
When the features editor asked me to find a series of “sexy nymphomaniacs” to interview, I knew the fun, witty magazine I used to love was long gone.
Unfortunately, 30 years later, it’s this misogynist element of porn that has endured. Good job guys.