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Sex, Booze and Fags: Masculinity, Style and Men's Magazines

Men's magazines are, it seems, all about sex, booze and fags. A cursory glance at the newsagent shelves stacking magazines for men reveals a raft of blatant front cover images of scantily clad young women and headlining of articles concerning sex or alcohol-induced practical jokes. Images of cigarette smoking are also common, whilst male homosexuality is either rarely or poorly represented. In addition, New Lad, in contrast with New Man, is often deeply concerned not to appear 'faggy' or effeminate and the tobacco, alcohol and sex industries are well represented in terms of the advertising space they occupy. My concern here is to unpack this situation and demonstrate that contemporary men's magazines often invoke issues of lifestyle and sexuality, particularly as they relate to masculinity. Much of this also centres, I will assert, on their uneasy relationship to matters of men's fashion and style. The meteoric rise of the new so-called 'men's magazines' in the UK has also created much interest in academic as well as media circles (Edwards, 1997; Mort, 1996; Nixon, 1996). The fact of their growth is pretty much without contention. As measured in terms of circulation through annual Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) studies and readership figures through National Readership Surveys (NRS), the market for men's magazines in the UK has grown from a mere four titles in 1990, each with a circulation of well under 100,000, to currently at least a dozen titles, depending on one's definition of a 'men's magazine', with top sellers such as FHM (For Him Magazine) hitting circulation figures of 500,000 (Beynon, 2000). In addition, only two titles-Arena launched in 1986 and GQ launched in 1988---existed at all in the I980s. The accuracy of such figures, particularly those related to readerships, are open to question but the overall expansion of this particular market has been undeniable. Further evidence for this expansion is provided in the overall diversification of the market for men's magazines and its increasing tendency to sub-niche within its own niche. For example, Arena, FHM, loaded and Maxim now all produce related fashion titles of their own whilst GQ and FH M have also spawned their own health and fitness magazines. The market has also tended to sub-divide into health-oriented titles such as Men's Health and Men's Fitness, up-market glossies such as GQ, Esquire and Arena, and the slightly more down-