Followers

Saturday, 31 August 2013

The Pub and the Male Species

I really don't mind going out to the pub. I like it because I get to meet up with my friends and while I am there I want to make new friends. What I really do not get is this ultra male culture I know it goes by another name called Laddism. So what is the definition of  Laddism?

Lad culture (also laddish culture and laddism) is a subculture initially associated with Britpop music of the 1990s. "The image of the 'lad' or 'new lad' arose in the early 1990s as a generally middle-class figure espousing attitudes conventionally (though not necessarily correctly) attributed to the working classes".

The term "new lad" was blended by journalist Sean O'Hagan in a 1993 article in Arena.

Part of "the postmodern transformation of masculinity...the 1990s 'new lad' was a clear reaction to the 'new man'...most clearly embodied in current men's magazines, such as Maxim, FHM and Loaded, and marked by a return to hegemonic masculine values of sexism & male homosociality". At a time when "men saw themselves as battered by feminism", one could also consider that "laddishness is a response to humiliation and indignity...the girl-power! girl-power! female triumphalism which echoes through the land".
Lad culture now reaches beyond men's magazines to movies such as Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and to the TV sitcoms, Men Behaving Badly and Game On. The Men Behaving Badly and Fantasy Football League television programmes present images of Laddishness that are dominated by the male pastimes of drinking, watching football, and sex. These are presented as being ironic and "knowing". (The masthead of Loaded is "for men who should know better".)

The American equivalent has been termed "'Frat Boy Nation'...a backlash against the sensitive, pro-feminist male"of a very similar order. The rise of the new lad coincided with a backlash against feminism by both men and women, and in particular against the figure of the new man as "one who has subjugated his masculinity in order to fulfill the needs of women...this passive and insipid image". At a time when "the stereotypes for men attentive to feminism were two: Eunuch, or Beast",and when women were increasingly feeling that "new men are fine in the kitchen, but who wants them in the bedroom?"the "new lad" image offered "a space of fun, consumption and sexual freedom for men", as well as "a refuge from the constraints and demands of marriage and nuclear family".
Contrasting the two gender constructs, Tim Edwards, a sociologist at the University of Leicester, describes the new man as pro-feminist, albeit narcissistic, and the new lad as pre-feminist, and a reaction to second-wave feminism.The new man image failed to appeal to a wide readership whereas the more adolescent Lad culture appeals more to the ordinary man, says Edwards.Social constraints also meant that "it is easier to be a lad rather than a new man in most workplaces".
However, Edwards also points out that lad culture men's magazines of the 21st century contain little that is actually new. Noting a study of the history of Esquire, he observes that there is little substantially different between the new man Arena and GQ and the new lad Loaded et al. Both address assumed men's interests of cars, alcohol, sport, and women, and differ largely in that the latter have a more visual style. From this he infers that "the New Man and the New Lad are niches in the market more than anything else, often defined according to an array of lifestyle accessories", and concludes that the new lad image dominates the new man image simply because of its greater success at garnering advertising revenue for men's magazines.

So in a quick summary men are arrogant and chauvinistic idiots



No comments: