LADS! MAGS! GASP at this 2005 Janice Turner piece

[WomanDaresTo]

Sometimes you feel like nothing will ever change, and then you see something like this and think "fucking hell what on earth was everyone thinking back in 2005"

amp.theguardian.com/theguardian/2005/oct/22/weekend7.weekend3

I am entirely sure my then 22ish self would have puzzled by Janice's prudery. I knew no other reality than aspiring to be one of Maxim's 100 sexiest women.

Are things better now? Are the Abi Titmusses of 2019 just posting lingerie pics on insta or doing cam work?

(Hat tip to sarah ditum for sharing this on twitter. Turns out the editor from loaded is now a Brexit party candidate. Here is a library pic I found on google.)

Things are the same / worse

Men can now enjoy an endless parade of extreme degradation of women on the net 24/7

I was 30ish in 2005 and so 20ish when the first lads mag came out

I always hated them as did many of the girls in my circle
There were plenty of feminist actions / complaints / anger etc about the lads mags so when Janice says why aren't feminists complaining she must have been looking in the wrong direction. Most people I knew saw them for what they were.

It was in one of those that danny dyer had a column I think, in the dying days of these mags, and his advice to a man who had been chucked was to slash his exes face so no-one else would want her. He had to apologise for that. But, these magazines were always quite clear in what they were.

yes it was zoo 2010

they were almost finished by then anyway

www.theguardian.com/media/2010/may/05/danny-dyer-zoo-magazine

I am entirely sure my then 22ish self would have puzzled by Janice's prudery. I knew no other reality than aspiring to be one of Maxim's 100 sexiest women

I was 22 in 1981. When this article was written in 2005 I was 45. At no time would I have thought what was being described was acceptable.

Once porn and real human sexuality were distinguishable. Not even porn's biggest advocates would suggest a porn flick depicted reality, that women were gagging for sex 24/7 and would drop their clothes and submit to rough, anonymous sex at the slightest invitation
Now it's so believable that it's a handy defence in a criminal court to get off rape and murder. Yep thanks Nuts and Zoo. Great legacy.

A typical sex Q&A feature in Zoo had four questions about how to persuade a reluctant woman to have anal sex, three on how to get her to watch hard-core porn and "How can I get my girlfriend to give me deep throat?" Sex is guiltless fun, with little tenderness and no consequences, is the lads' mag message.

How to sexually abuse a woman. Their former readers are the ones now slapping women during sex or strangling them. There was nothing harmless about lads mags.

What I find offensive,' Merrill says, 'is racism or homophobia or extreme rightwing views. There is more that's offensive in the Spectator than in Zoo.'

Of course. They were never doing to do, for example, a cheeky bantz mock slave auction photoshoot featuring black people with ropes round their necks and "How much would you pay?" or have homophobic jokes in. But it was just fine to have contemptuous "thick bitch of the week" photos, refer to Courtney Love's former partners as "previous owners", have jokes about miscarriage and have the Danny Dyer amusing "cut her face" advice (misquoted my arse) along with endless articles scornfully reducing women and their constituent parts and abilities to , as the article puts it, fuckpuppets.

The attitude still prevades. Men in the public eye might have to apologise for the worst of the rape jokes now and again, but it won't be treated with the same seriousness as the likes of Israel Folau's remarks.

I always thought Martin Daubney looked like a penis in human form. Suited his job really.

Bit of a depressing article. What a legacy, indeed.

They were never harmless fun. In 2004-ish, I had a contractor working for me (IT) who gave me no end of trouble. I couldn’t get a day’s work out of him, and he made it abundantly clear that he did not take orders from young women like me. One thing he enjoyed doing was leaving copies of nuts and zoo on my desk, open at the sorts of pictures described in that article. The message was “this is what you are, uppity woman”.

Everyone pretended it was just The Bantz, of course. I would scream inside, but chuck the mags back at him and say “you forgot your tragic wank rag again, Simon”.

Finally got shot of him when he told my boss that the problem between us was that he’d had to reject my sexual advances (he was physically disgusting and smelled of fish, and I was in those days a bit of a hottie). She laughed in his face and terminated his contract the next week

you forgot your tragic wank rag again, Simon

BRAVA

Perhaps one day we will no longer feel glee at a story grimmo sexist getting some pushback.

Used to work with a fellow (in FTSE100 financial services) who I found leaning back in his chair of a morning and perusing the page 3 lovely in the Sun, in full view of anyone and everyone walking into the department. I shouted "CATCHING UP ON CURRENT AFFAIRS ARE WE" and enough of his brain realised it wasn't worth carrying on. He also used to rest his bollocks on the corner of female colleague's desks when towering over them to demand their attention. This was in 2013 mark you.

Actually I could go on.

I'm interested that as someone slap in the target age bracket, I fully bought into all this ladette, stripping is empowering, Loaded guff. I used to read FHM and Loaded as a teenager because women's mags were just about pleasing men and how to be thin and were so terribly pedestrian (I thought).