All for Him: Articles About Sex in American Lad Magazines

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SEXUAL MESSAGES IN POPULAR MAGAZINES

Given the apparent influence of magazine content and the importance of independent reading in general, and magazines in particular, as sources of sexual information for young people, it is important to understand what messages about sex are contained in the magazines read by young people. Relatively little research is available on this topic, and what is available is largely concerned with magazines targeted at young women. A broad range of sexual topics are apparently available in women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan, including topics as diverse as contraception, sexual technique, and sex addiction, though sexual techniques and pleasuring seem to be most common (Bielay & Herold, 1995); topics of magazines targeted at younger women generally focus on establishing and maintaining romantic relationships and sexual decision-making, though sexual health issues and techniques are also present (Carpenter, 1998; Garner, Sterk, & Adams, 1998). Magazines targeted at adolescent girls, such as Seventeen and YM, have been found to contain conflicting messages about sex; they encourage girls to be sexy, emphasize the importance of romantic relationships, instruct young women on how to please young men, and simultaneously emphasize patience and control (Carpenter, 1998; Durham, 1998; Garner et al., 1998). Studies of magazines targeted at adult audiences, both male and female, such as Cosmopolitan, Self, GQ, and Playboy, have demonstrated that their contents treat women as sex objects, both through use of objectifying images (Krassas, Blauwkamp, & Wesselink, 2001) and the written content of articles about relationships (Duran & Prusank, 1997).

Despite the relatively important role they may play in the development of young people's attitudes toward and beliefs about sex, there is a surprising paucity of research on the nature of sexual content in magazines targeted at young people, especially young men. What little research is available on men's magazines has focused on magazines such as Playboy, Penthouse, and GQ; these magazines are designed for and marketed to adult men in general, and not to adolescent boys and young adult men in particular. Further, magazines such as Playboy, despite their ostensible status as "lifestyle magazines," seem to be in a very different category than lifestyle magazines such as Cosmopolitan that are oriented toward women.

SEX IN LAD MAGAZINES

There is, however, a genre of magazines that is targeted principally at young men and that does parallel, in many ways, women's lifestyle magazines: so-called "lad" magazines such as Maxim, Stuff, and FHM. These magazines, modeled after successful British magazines, are targeted at young men and, although they do feature enough scantily clad models to be banned from some retail stores (Carr & Hays, 2003), they do not contain even frontal nudity. These magazines debuted in the late 1990s in the United States, and they have rapidly established a firm cultural presence. Maxim, the oldest and most successful of the genre, has a readership of over 12 million; according to Maxim's own data, their readership is overwhelmingly male (76%), unmarried (71%), and fairly young (the median age of readers is 26) (Maxim Online, 2003). Other magazines of this genre have smaller followings, but with similar, or even younger, demographic characteristics.

The study described here was undertaken to explore the nature of the messages about sex contained in these magazines. There were several goals in this exploration. First, an attempt was made to discover what specific topics were addressed in articles that were predominantly about sexual subjects. As discussed above, past research suggests that young people want information about sexual health and personal empowerment issues; they want to read about specific STDs, their prevention and treatment, and about how to negotiate condom use with a partner (Kaiser Family Foundation et al., 2003; Treise & Gotthoffer, 2002). At the same time, we know that women's magazines focus more on sexual techniques and pleasuring than on such information, though they do give substantial attention to issues related to women's reproductive health (Bielay & Herold, 1995). Given traditional gender roles that portray women as sexual gatekeepers and men as sexually driven (DeLameter, 1987; Phillips, 2000), we would expect an even greater emphasis on topics related to sexual gratification than those related to sexual health in lad magazines than has been observed in women's magazines. Further, we should observe a clear focus on men's sexuality and sexual outcomes as opposed to women's sexual outcomes.

The second objective of this project was to determine what sexual topics were, though not the primary subject of a given article, embedded in articles about sex. It may be that certain subjects that are underrepresented as foci of entire articles are nonetheless amply represented as elements of other articles. Such is seemingly the case with the presence of messages about condom use on television; although few scenes deal with condom use as a primary subject, relatively more scenes about specific sexual encounters incorporate condom use (Kunkel et al., 2003). To understand the nature of the sexual content in these articles, it is necessary to understand all of the topics, rather than just the predominant subject, that are discussed within them.

The third goal was to assess the nature of the relationships presented as the contexts for sexual activity within these magazines. Given repeated findings that men tend to privilege variety among sexual partners (Baumeister et al., 2001; DeLameter, 1987; Schmitt et al., 2003), it was expected that most articles about sex in magazines targeted at young men would presume fairly low-commitment relationships as the context for sexual activity, such as strangers or casual dating relationships. Alternately, it may be that relatively more committed relationship states are presented as contexts for sexual activity, but that such relationships are portrayed negatively.

METHOD

Sample

Three magazines were identified for inclusion in this study due to their predominance within the genre--Maxim, Stuff, and FHM (For Him Magazine). These magazines are often linked together in the popular press, as well as by Wal-Mart executives, who banned the sale of all three in 2003 (Carr, 2002; Carr & Hays, 2003). They are also the oldest of their genre in the United States (Carr, 2002), and each ranks among the 100 most widely read magazines in the United States (Information Please, 2003).

A systematic random sample of magazines was drawn by selecting 4 months of the year at random (March, May, August, and October) and obtaining an issue of each magazine for each of those 4 months for every year of each magazine's publication through the issue published in May of 2003. This yielded differing sample sizes for each of the three titles because the magazines were founded at different times--Maxim began publishing in the United States in mid-1997, FHM in early 2003, and Stuff in mid-1999. Three specific issues in the sample could not be located; in these cases, the ensuing month's issue of the same magazine was substituted. Initial examination of issues of each title from different years suggests that differences between the magazines' sexual content are minimal.

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All articles primarily about a sexual topic in the magazines were included in the sample. The determination of which articles would be included was made primarily by examining the table of contents. An article was defined as a body of editorial content described under a single heading in the table of contents. Articles determined to be about a sexual topic included those for which the primary topic discussed in the article's prose content dealt with sexual behaviors or relationships, their antecedents, or their consequences. Articles that consisted primarily of pictorials of women described in terms of sex appeal were not included. A total of 91 articles from 53 different issues met these criteria, and they constituted the sample of articles about sex.

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Written in: 2/05. Last reviewed 11/05.

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