Are men magazines out of fashion? The Media Guardian has reported that the sales of trendy men’s magazines has fallen dramatically year on year. The most popular magazine aimed at men, FHM, published by EMAP, fell 25.9%. EMAP’s other weekly publication, Zoo, also appears to have lost its sparkle with sales dropping 21.5% year on year. Arena has also seen its sales tumble, resulting ultimately in the sacking of the editor of FHM, Ross Brown and Arena’s Will Drew.
This huge loss in circulation is evident across the board with the publications Loaded and Maxim experiencing a downturn in popularity. Nuts, the main rival to Zoo, managed to minimise its losses, with only 3.8% year on year; it now outsells Zoo by 90,000 copies a week.
These statistics show a huge drop in the popularity of men’s magazines, but why is this? A clue to the collapse in the market could be the rise in digital publishing. There is a genuine suggestion that younger potential readers are not even bothering with the trip to the newsagents when they can create their own magazine online. When asked if he regularly buys lads’ magazines, one Cardiff student replied that they were “a waste of money when you could find most of the content on the internet anyway”. I sent a questionnaire to a selection of young men to find out what magazines they bought and why personally they thought sales had plummeted so radically.
“I do not buy these lads’ mags because they offer me nothing I couldn’t work out for myself. The magazines seem to strive for a brainless, embarrassing projection of today’s culture and the journalism is inevitably of poor quality. Common themes appear to be tedious and small-minded (i.e. sexist and homophobic) in tone, appealing to a lowest-common denominator audience.
“I fall into the exact targeted demographic, i.e. straight, male, 21, and find a vast spectrum of preferable information and entertainment sources in text form with ease, including alternative culture magazines (including free magazines such as Vice) and internet sites (the list is endless) that satisfy infinitely more than FHM, Zoo, etc.
“These magazines design a lifestyle that I am supposed to aspire to, which couldn’t be further from the truth.” (Jack, Nottingham)
Another reply stated that “(I) used to buy men’s magazines fairly regularly but have stopped because I realised that I never actually read them. I just shell out close to a fiver a time, have a quick flick through and then pile them up for them to gather dust and use up space. Upon realising this I slowly but surely cut down and eventually went cold turkey altogether!
“But, having said all that, I think the underlying reason that I didn’t ever read cover to cover is that each contains one or two stories of interest but the rest is completely useless – just filling space. If I were able to combine elements from a range of different magazines to create one publication I think it may be a different story altogether.
Lastly, while there is a massive market for women’s magazines, the men’s market is more limited with only three or maybe four worth even considering. More choice, and more varied choice at that, might equal an increase in sales.” (Ben, London)
Another issue raised was the quality of the magazines, one respondent claimed that “all the girls are rank in the mags for a start; it’s just cheap crap, and men desire more sophistication. All my mates are buying health mags at the mo; men are more inclined to get fit nowadays. Plus, the magazines are well expensive; they are the same every week: tits, cars, etc – boring rubbish. (Giles, Loughborough).
It does look like the golden age of the lad mag, pioneered in the 90s by IPC’s Loaded, is over. It’s been 10 years since ‘lad culture’ arrived, proudly asking us to “get our tits out for lads.” These men’s magazines dictated to young men ‘what it is to be a man’ and provided a bible-like reference guide on how to deal with life’s most important issues; beer, babes and banter.
It looks as though today’s modern man wants more than this stereotypical version of masculinity. And so they should; the concept of gender is constantly changing. Men today seem to be more open-minded and emotionally aware than their predecessors. They have needs that simply can’t be filled by the standards of today’s publications.
