Boys will be boys

While lad's magazines such as FHM and Loaded have been subject to critical attention with respect to the way they represent and negotiate models of masculinity, there has been a significant absence of work that addresses the representation of women in these and other publications, such as Zoo and Nuts. In this paper I argue that these magazines normalise pornography through an invocation of the “real,” by encouraging reader action and interaction, and through alignment with women's magazines. The construction and representation of the “real” is difficult to reconcile with the claims of irony used to excuse representation of women as sexual objects. Such claims are indefensible and are symptomatic of hegemonic gender norms in which women are not yet recognised as human.