key points made

The media defines lads as modern and fashionable young men who are not afraid to admit they enjoy porn, women, sex, heavy drinking and sports.

Photographic images which make up the majority of the content of all three magazines loaded, fhm and playboy , depict and represent women as the prototypical object of sexual desire, presenting the idea that a womans purpose is to look appealing and attractive to a watching male population.


The front cover is the ultimate selling pull for a magazine to gain a greater readership and therfore has to stand out to the audience in order to gain sales and make money.

The slightly open lips act as an index for the womans willigness to partipcate in sex. The image is extremely provocative and works on the insinuation of a sexual encounter between the model and the reader.

Former editor of loaded, james brown , has descirbed the magazines as all about having the best fucking time of your life. He defends the magazine from critics accusing it of containing sexist material, altering and changing attitudes in society, by arguing that it is simply "Enjoyable entertainment"

However implicity the magazines hold an overridding emphasis on penetrative sex and repeatedly represent women as the weaker gender who were made only to make mens life more enyoyable and entertaining.

The imagery of the tradiotnally beautiful female, who is attractive, thin , and well groomed also explicitly puts a pressure on women to conform to what the male population finds attractive

This relates to the "hypodermic needle" theory that audience are passive and are easily influenced by what they see and hear in the media, suggesting that media has a strong link with power.

A second theory the uses and gratifications theory would suggest that mens lifestyle magazines make men view women as sexual objects for thier own gratification. Proposing instead that audiences are not totally passive and use the media in different ways to achieve different gratifications.

The imagery found within modern lifestyle magazines is comparable to that found within playboy, using a variety of camera shots and angles to enhance the stereotype represented.

There is little text to accompany the pictures, which suggets implicity that women are only to be looked at and thier success in life will be decided by thier appearence. This ideology is determined as the feature focuses entirely on the naked model.