The Reluctant Patriarch: The Emergence of Lads and Lad Mags in the 1990s

This paper examines the representation of the ‘weak man’ (or ‘useless bloke’) in contemporary popular British culture, most visibly in television comedy, but also apparent in men’s magazines such as FHM and Loaded, in popular ‘confessional’ novels of the genre inaugurated by Nick Hornby, and even noted in theatre and popular science writing. While many writers and commentators have attributed this tendency to a rise in feminism and feminine power, this paper suggests that the representation is primarily produced by men for masculine consumption. It argues that it might be symptomatic of a masculine rejection of patriarchal values which are no longer felt by men to be in their interest