Society
My brief career among nipples
Published 09 February 2004
Observations on lad's mags
It was a brief and charmless flirtation, and now, after two editions, my career as a columnist for the new lads' magazine Zoo Weekly has come to an end. In case you hadn't noticed, a bunch of weekly lads' mags has been launched this year (I think the collective noun is "a spray") with titles like Zoo, Nuts, Thrust, Spurt or Cock. They feature a high celebrity nipple count, football stuff, endless top ten lists, and a good dollop of graphic injury/snuff photos. In between is woven the odd article and column.
I assume that the level of crossover readership between Zoo Weekly and the New Statesman (where I write a fortnightly column) isn't that great. If it is, the NS is in trouble and I expect to see a new politicians' wives section - followed by photo features of Noreena Hertz and Naomi Klein wrestling in oil for the crown of "anti-globalising queen", and John Kampfner taking Gordon Brown to Spearmint Rhino for a consumer report.
When Ben Knowles, a nice man and an ex-editor of the New Musical Express, asked if I would write for Zoo, I wanted to know what they expected me to write about. Going to one Wimbledon AFC game this season hardly qualified me to write about football. And my stunning lack of interest in Angelina Jolie's topless cinematic past didn't seem to bode well, either. Reassured that the normal mix of a couple of gags, an extended rant and a dash of utter hatred for politicians would be fine, I wanted to know a bit more about the publication.
"It's a basic lads' mag, except weekly," said Ben. "Our market research shows that our target audience of men between 18 and 30 really like you." What? "I know," Ben said. "We were as surprised as you." And that was what made me agree to write for them: half-arsed flattery.
Friends debated the merits of doing it. "Isn't it worth trying to reach people who aren't part of the activist scene?" said one. "But are you really going to have any kind of impact amid the tits and arse?" asked a woman friend. "Maybe you could recruit some of the models to come and demonstrate at the next arms fair," fantasised a crusty from behind the rim of a can of Tennants.
In the end, none of us could have known how banal it would be. A prominent picture in the mag shows a woman masturbating, with a cat's head where her vagina should be, accompanied by a quip about the size of pubic lice these days. This is the kind of website trash that bored office workers e-mail to each other to break the monotony of the day.
A list of top ten terrorist organisations is merely an excuse to show a photo of soldiers parading over body bags. Two items appear about a survey that shows women like sex with strangers. It is predictable, voyeuristic and dull. Its pseudo- prole culture of the uberdog begs for it to be read by City boys. "Look at a picture of these wankers," it cries. "Everyone is a tosser but you! Everything is a commodity. Everything exists for your pleasure."
I read one edition and stopped writing my column. Obviously, this was an error of my own making, and I should have known better. So I have ordered an inquiry into my behaviour. Fortunately, I have been completely exonerated.
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