What a Man Wants, What a Man Needs: Markers of Masculinity in Print Advertising

Which advertisements appeal to a male readership? What are the underlying strategies used to target men? With the help of a corpus of adjectives derived from the men's magazine GQ, this study seeks to analyze how masculinity is constructed in print advertising. In doing so, it approaches the phenomenon of 'male language' from a sociolinguistic perspective focused on gender and employs quantitative as well as qualitative evaluation methods to reveal that current advertising campaigns construct 'male lifestyles' around products by using adjectives that convey simplistic and straight-forward messages, but also go beyond that by taking into account non-linear approaches when targeting a male audience. Finally, a comparison with advertisements in the women's magazine Cosmopolitan highlights the emergence of gender-specific features as well as gender-oriented product groups and reveals categories and concepts that are exclusive to their target genders.

Media Representations as a Form of Stacking: Male and Female Athletes Featured on Men’s Magazine Covers, 1980–2019

This study analyzed 264 athlete images featured on the covers of nine men’s magazines across a 40-year period, 1980–2019. Among males, who accounted for 227 (81%) of the 264 athletes, African Americans and Latinos each represented 6 sports, most of which involved team competition, while White males represented 21 sports, many of which were individual. Analyses of position stacking in football showed White players in positions considered “central” to contest outcomes and Black athletes assigned to more “peripheral” roles. Among females, nearly all of whom were White, more than one in three participated in professional wrestling or sports entertainment. Other female athletes represented individual sports such as tennis and swimming. Overall, the study concludes that men’s magazines reproduced stacking patterns observed in earlier research.

Probing peace journalism: The discursive construction of blackness within the racial democracy of Colombia

This study examines the discursive construction of blackness in the Colombian men’s magazine SoHo, using peace journalism as an evaluative framework. Specifically, it examines 116 feature stories focused on race, published from June 1999 to June 2017. The study found that SoHo did not openly cover racial-structural inequalities, did not contextualize racism, omitted the voices of people of African descent, neglected the race of Black leaders, evaded controversial language, disregarded racial polarization, and presented Black people as disempowered individuals while championing non-Blacks as agents of change. Although SoHo is not a peace journalism project, the magazine’s coverage of blackness revealed that avoiding incendiary language – a key tenet of peace journalism – may in fact maintain power dynamics between oppressors and oppressed, as misunderstanding interaction with collaboration does.

«Vet du hvorfor Gud skapte Adam før Eva?»1: Vi Menns vitser om religion, kjønn og sex

This chapter explores change and continuity in the jokes on religion, gender and sex published in the comics’ section of the men’s magazine Vi Menn (in English, Us Men) from the 1980s through 2016. The study asks: What characterizes Vi Menn’s humor on religion, gender and sex during this period? Which religions are covered, and how are they portrayed? How are categories such as gender, sexuality and ethnicity expressed in the jokes? The analysis shows that ideas about gender differences are an important component of the jokes, and furthermore, that the jokes are based on stereotypical conceptions of gender and religion. Such stereotypes include the idea that men are inherently preoccupied with sex and the sexual objectification of women, and the idea that religion and sex are contradictory. Rather than challenging stereotypical ideas of religious groups and gender, Vi Menn’s jokes reinforce conventional gender roles and construct boundaries between «us» and «them», marked by religion, gender, sexuality and ethnicity.

‘For Men Who Should Know Better’

Between 1969 and 1997 there was an ongoing re-evaluation of male consumer behaviour, which manifested itself through an emergent men’s lifestyle magazine sector, but also an expansion of established media—that is, newspapers, television, and radio. New applications of persuasion also came to the fore as public relations and branding began to play a salient role in the marketing mix. The result of these changes was a concerted increase in the quality and quantity of brand communication aimed at men. This chapter examines the changes in attitude within the persuasion industry towards male consumers and young men in particular and the emergence in the UK of a mass-market men’s magazine sector between 1986 and 1997. It also explores the relationship between titles such as LM, Q, Loaded, and FHM and the public relations industry.

Before the bond

This chapter begins by recognising the apparent coincidence that both James Bond and Playboy magazine first entered popular culture in 1953. It goes on to make the case that this can in fact be explained with reference to the publishing industry, certain influences on the lives and imaginations of creators Ian Fleming and Hugh Hefner, and the social and cultural climate of the post-war era. The strong coincidence of Fleming’s first Bond novel, Casino Royale, and Hefner’s Playboy being published in the same year, though on opposite sides of the Atlantic, appears less accidental when understood within the wider context of the 1950s, as do the changes that were made to the pre-existing literary formulas of the spy thriller and the men’s magazine. Looking at the post-war contexts of Britain and America, the chapter demonstrates that the early Bond novels and Playboy negotiated aspects of the changing social and cultural circumstances in similar ways, creating a playboy lifestyle fantasy that celebrated independence from the traditional breadwinner ideal.

The literary Bond

This chapter deals with the first phase in the formal relationship between Playboy, Ian Fleming and the Bond novels, which began in 1960 and lasted up to the middle of the decade. During this time, Fleming and his writing made regular appearances in Playboy, and there began a direct relationship between the author, the literary James Bond and Hefner’s men’s magazine that blurred the lines between real life and fiction. The chapter also considers how Fleming and the Bond novels endorsed Playboy, and how Playboy endorsed Fleming and the Bond novels, against the backdrop of James Bond’s introduction into American popular culture. Examples considered include Fleming’s Thrilling Cities trip to Chicago, his ‘Playboy Interview’, and the presentation of the Bond stories and serialisations as part of Playboy’s ‘Entertainment for Men’ formula. The chapter concludes by identifying that Fleming’s death in 1964 and the growing popularity of the Bond films in the mid-1960s, in association with the strength of Sean Connery’s public identification with the character of Bond, meant that as the decade continued Playboy’s relationship with James Bond entered its next phase.