Lad culture
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Lad culture (also laddish culture and laddism) is a subculture commonly 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".[1] In an ironic, self-conscious fashion, "lads took up an anti-intellectual position, scorning sensitivity and caring in favour of drinking, violence, and a pre-feminist and racist attitude to women as both sex objects and creatures from another species".[2]
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[edit] Origins
The term "new lad" was blended by journalist Sean O'Hagan in a 1993 article in Arena.[3][4][5]
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".[6] At a time when "men saw themselves as battered by feminism",[7] 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".[8]
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.[9][10] 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"[11] of a very similar order.
[edit] Postfeminism
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".[12] At a time when "the sterotypes for men attentive to feminism were three: Eunuch, Beast, or slag",[13] - and when women were increasingly feeling that "no men are fine in the kitchen, but who wants them tidying in the bedroom?"[14] - 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".[15]
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.[9][16] 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.[9] Social constraints also meant that "it is easier to be a lad rather than a new man in most workplaces".[17]
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 substantial 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.
Arguably at least, the lad has been succeeded in the 21st century by the postfeminist man. "On the one hand, the 'postfeminist man' accommodates backlash scripts - drawing upon characteristics of the 'new lad'. On the other hand, he is more self-aware...could be described as the 'new lad' grown up or a less sensitive 'new man'...a melting-pot of masculinities still negotiating the ongoing impact of feminism on his identity".[18]
[edit] Negative effects
Lad culture has naturally attracted criticism from feminist circles. For example, Germaine Greer critiques it in her book The Whole Woman (2000);[9][16][19] while others note that "it's a dark world that Loaded and the lad culture has bequeathed us".[20]
A study by Gabrielle Ivinson of Cardiff University and Patricia Murphy of the Open University has identified lad culture as a source of behavioural confusion,[21] and an investigation by Adrienne Katz has linked it to suicide and depression.[10]
A study of the architecture profession found that lad culture had a negative impact on women completing their professional education.[22] Pundit Helen Wilkinson believes that lad culture has affected politics and decreased the ability of women to participate.[23]
[edit] Ladette
The word "ladette" has been coined to describe young women who try to emulate laddish behaviour. It is defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary as:
Young women who behave in a boisterously assertive or crude manner and engage in heavy drinking sessions' [24]
[edit] In literature
- In the wake of laddism, the adolescent Noughties hero of Hard Cash, while making out with a girlfriend-to-be, finds himself "having these unreconstructed male thoughts like - she went to that party cos of me, she owes me".[25]
- "One of Nick Hornby's concerns in Fever Pitch is to represent the way in which the 'new men' of the 1980s and 1990s have to struggle with reconfigured constructions of masculinity...this 'new lad' phenomenon".[26]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Knowles, in Kristina Nelson, Narcissism in High Fidelity (2004) p. 19
- ^ Knowles, in Nelson, p. 19
- ^ Tim Adams (23 January 2005). "New kid on the newsstand". The Observer. Guardian News and Media Limited. http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2005/jan/23/features.review7. Retrieved 20 November 2009.
- ^ Michael Bracewell (June–August 1996). "A Boy’s Own Story". Frieze (magazine). Frieze. http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/a_boys_own_story. Retrieved 20 November 2009.
- ^ Rosalind Gill. "Power and the Production of Subjects: a Genealogy of the New Man and the New Lad". Gender Institute, London School of Economics. http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/genderInstitute/pdf/powerAndProduction.pdf. Retrieved 20 November 2009.
- ^ David Nylund, Beer, Babes, and Balls (2007) p. 9
- ^ Susan Faludi, Stifed (London 1999) p. 594
- ^ Fay Weldon, Godless in Eden (London 1999) p. 61
- ^ a b c d Tim Edwards (2006). Cultures of Masculinity. Routledge. pp. 39–42. ISBN 0415284805.
- ^ a b "Health: Lad culture blamed for suicides". BBC News (BBC). 1999-10-17. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/475253.stm.
- ^ Nylund, p. 10-11
- ^ Joanne Knowles, Nick Hornby's High Fidelity (2002) p. 16 and p. 39
- ^ Naomi Wolf, Promiscuities (London 1997) p. 222
- ^ Fay Weldon, Godless in Eden (London 1999) p. 69
- ^ S. Genz/B. A. Brabon, Postfeminism (2009) p. 142
- ^ a b Pamela Abbott, Claire Wallace, and Melissa Tyler (2005). An Introduction to Sociology: Feminist Perspectives. Routledge. p. 354. ISBN 0415312582.
- ^ Samantha Holland, Alternative Femininities (2004) p. 29
- ^ Genz, p. 143
- ^ Jackson, C. (2006). Lads and Ladettes in School: Gender and a Fear of Failure. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
- ^ Kira Cochrane, "The dark world of lads' mags"
- ^ "Lad Culture and Boys' Confusion about Behaviour" (Press release). Leicester, England: The British Psychological Society. 2001-06-28. http://www.bps.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/releases$/iccpl-2001$/lad-culture-and-boys-confusion-about-behaviour$.cfm.
- ^ Gates, Charlie (2003-07-11). "Lad culture forces women to quit: RIBA-funded study looks at reasons behind profession's high female drop-out rate". Building Design 1587: pp. 3.
- ^ Wilkinson, Helen (1998-08-07). "The day I fell out of love with Blair". New Statesman 127: pp. 9–10.
- ^ "Ladettes enter dictionary". BBC News. 12 July 2001. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1434906.stm.
- ^ Kate Cann, Hard Cash (London 2000) p. 237-8
- ^ Nick Bentley, Contemporary British Fiction (2008) p. 117
[edit] Further reading
- Michael S. Kimmel and Amy Aronson (2004). Men and Masculinities: A Social, Cultural, and Historical Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. pp. 569–570. ISBN 1576077748.
