To think Lad Mags aren't the real problem

[Mengog]

Over the last couple of years feminist groups and others have really doubled down on the campaigns against Lads Mags and Page 3.

Yet time and again I'm more shocked at the gossip Mags. This was sparked off by a headline about Cheryl Cole, calling her "a bag of bones" on Heat or something similar.

Not too long ago the front of FHM featured Kelly Brook on the cover with the headline 'Beautiful'. This was next to a gossip mag calling her "Fat".

AIBU to think the wrong magazines have been targeted?

Although I think it's a part of human nature for people to take enjoyment the downfall of someone you don't like.

It's done in every part of society for numerous different reasons - footballers, actors, singers, your boss, the school bully etc etc.

There is a chain of thought that attractive women have many advantages in life. So when they look less than perfect it gives people a chance to bring them down a peg.

Yes, to build on one part of what Buffy says, I'm struck by the way 'choice' rhetoric presents itself as pragmatic and realistic, when in fact it's based upon abstract situations which have never occurred. A society might be fine if no-one chose to do any of the things listed, but since people do, we in the real world have to deal with the harm it causes to other people. Repeating that people needn't have done this, and that we all have choice, is extraordinarily naive, but manages to sound sophisticated and pragmatic because of the association with 'choice' as consumer empowerment, and the place of cod-economics as the card that trumps all others in public debate.

Pardon?

Not only fair, but a far clearer statement of what I was inchoately trying to get at!

Hi QI. Buffy is our in-house translator. She rocks.

Theyre all shit, and theyre all part of the problem

So who actually wants whom to have the power to ban what sort of magazine?

I wouldn't - but as long as people buy these things it's legislation or live with them.

As for personal responsibility: in my teens I bought magazines such as Mayfair. At 63 I am not tortured by feelings of guilt but at 18 I decided that this was not the thing to do and exercised my free will accordingly - and binned my stash. I knew better and did better and anyone can do the same. Can't they?

But doesn't saying that "anyone" could bin the magazines like Mayfair ignore the fact that it's not the men looking at magazines who're being harmed? It's women in society at large. How do they exercise their "free choice" not to be in a society with men who objectify women?

QuiteIrregular That's my point. With a free press you don't.

The price of liberty is that a lot of shit gets printed onto dead trees with chemicals.

The notion of a "free press" is a bit vague, isn't it? There are quite specific constraints on what people can legally print, there are corporate and political interests which determine which media outlets espouse which ideas, and then consumers are presented with a limited range of publications. Beyond that there are social norms as to what people feel comfortable reading in public, or admit to reading to their friends, etc. Are you suggesting that we have to either bring in a very specific piece of legislation or throw up our hands and say everything's for the good of liberty?

(ha, bit of a cross-post there)

I agree with Buffy, but I'd go further and argue that what is needed is not legislation or a movement from within current, existing power structures but something new that stays very firmly outside them. I'd like to see women asking themselves and each other why these publications encourage them to
compete with one another, instead of standing together? And whose interests that serves in terms of economics and power? Because I truly believe we can create an alternative where we support each other more, so that women become to each other not a source of threat but of a solidarity that is powerful enough to truly change the way that politics and economics are run.

I wouldn't - but as long as people buy these things it's legislation or live with them.

That's a false binary choice based on the assumption that 'as long as people buy these things' can't be changed.

Whereas what really needs to happen is for the market - and the behaviour that drives it - to change for the better.

"Yanbu. At least if you appear on page 3 to be objectified it's complimentary, however sexist, rather than body shaming sexism. I'd rather be perved at by people making chauvinist comments than stared at in disgust by people insulting my body, my life and anything else they think of.
There is the degrading aspect, but personally I'd rather be degraded by being ogled and well paid, than be degraded by being forced to work any odd shift they offer on a zero hour contract, be degraded by going to the Jobcentre for ritual humiliation, be degraded by having to claim hb and have landlords assume you'll be a bad tenant, be degraded by people thinking I'm a scrounger while still being boracic lint.
Far more degrading things we inflict on each other than lads mags/ page 3"

Hi Lurked. I see that you have now learned a bit about negative media coverage of women, the same media coverage you knew nothing about when we spoke on another thread recently.

Your post must be one of the most depressing I've ever seen on MN. Is that all women have - a choice between types of degradation?