Men's Magazines Research Articles

GENDER-ORIENTED ADVERTISING AND PECULIARITIES OF ITS TRANSLATION IN LATVIA

Advertising both serves as a mirror of existing values in the society and makes an impact on them. By using stereotypes adverts can perpetuate them. This research explores the use of gender stereotypes in Latvian advertising from 2010 to 2023, with a particular focus on content in the men's magazine Klubs and the women's magazine Ieva. Through a qualitative and multimodal discourse analysis, the study examines how advertising reflects and perpetuates societal values through the use of gender stereotypes. To provide a broader view of the discussed issues the authors also consider adverts in other media and give a wider context of the gender stereotype discussion in Latvia. A brief insight into advertising in Latvia in 1920s and 1930s shows the existence of gender stereotypes, some of which are still present today. Modern stereotypes about women and men as depicted in adverts are analysed, along with non-stereotypical adverts that are becoming more numerous. The research finds that while a shift toward fewer gender stereotypes is visible in Latvian advertising, this change is not significant or widespread. In contrast, regions (for example, Rēzekne and Ogre still) exhibit more traditional and objectifying portrayals of gender roles. Results suggest that the translation of advertisements plays a crucial role in either reinforcing or breaking stereotypes, with recent examples showing both tendencies. Despite a gradual shift towards non-stereotypical portrayals, gender stereotypes in advertising remain deeply rooted in Latvian society, particularly in certain regions. The novelty of this research lies in its comparison of gender stereotypes across different time periods and media, particularly highlighting the evolving portrayal of women and men in advertising. Furthemore, the study pays specific attention to translated advertisements, revealing both the persistence of stereotypes and cases where they are being gradually challenged.

Return Fantasies: Martial Masculinity, Misogyny and Homosocial Bonding in the Aftermath of Second World War

AbstractThis article explores male popular culture in Australia in the mid‐1940s, particularly men's magazines of the period, to illuminate aspects of the psycho‐sexual dimensions of Australian veterans returning to civil society. The sexual landscape of Australian society had undergone considerable transformation, especially through an increasing sexualisation of popular culture in the 1920s and 1930s. This provided a context for considerable sexual anxiety and tension, especially in the context of numerous stories of Australian women consorting with American servicemen during the war. Men's popular culture, especially short fiction, where more lurid fantasies could play out, often depicted women as sexually voracious and duplicitous. Many of the short stories involved love triangles where the men were betrayed by women. But the resolution of these rivalries often pathologised women while preserving the male bonds of war. Homosocial bonds were a bulwark in the troubled transition from war to peace.

A Comparison Study of Linguistic Features in English Ads for Men and Women: A Case Study

This article is aims to shed light on providing a better understanding of linguistic features in English advertisements (hereinafter shortened to ads) for men and women using the descriptive, analytic, comparative and statistical methods to process the 92-sample database collected from four well-known magazines for men and three well-known magazines for women. The research shows interesting empirical results in terms of the lexical and syntactic features in ads for men and women for further study on gender language in advertising. In terms of the lexis, the authors point out the similarities and diferences in the use of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in advertisements for men and women, the contents of each type of ads are different depending on the specific characteristics of each gender. Almost all the numbers of adjectives and adverbs of all kinds for women’s is much higher than those in men’s ads as shown in the table 2 below ( 236 vs. 178). The results also reveal that men’s advertisements use verbs to create more direct requests than women’s (56% vs 35%). This is consistent with previous studies that suggested that women often use interrogative sentences (indirect) to request while men use imperative sentences(direct) to do so. In term of syntax, in women’s ads, the numbers of sentences and phrases are more than those in men’s ones. According to the survey data, there are 129 phrases and 177 sentences used in women’s ads and those numbers in men’s ads are 108 and 100. This is also true with the average number of words in women’s advertisement compared to men’s advertisement ( 64 vs. 43). And the numbers of the short texts of ads (less than 50 words) in the women’s and men’s ads groups are19 and 28 . These figures are likely to show the fact that: the advertiser often talks to women with more words than to men. The findings of this research may yield good suggestions professionally for advertisers/ copywriters and linguistic researchers. Advertisers should pay attention to the similarities as well as differences in gender language when building the content for men and women’s advertisements. Ads should be designed depending on the gender of the target audience to bring the best effect. Also, other linguistic researchers may use the findings of this research for their studies on the relationship beween linguistics and psychology.

In Search of the New Man

My aim in this article is to explore today's male roles and ideals by analysing the new men's magazines. I have primarily focussed on two magazines. I have also chosen to interview men in order to gain an understanding of how they perceive the masculine ideals prevalent in today's society as well as what they think of the new magazines. Does the everyday ideal correspond to that presented in the magazines? As my article deals with men's magazines, I find it relevant to explain concepts such as masculinity, gender systems and constructed gender. I agree with the theory that gender is socially constructed, primarily on the basis of the nature of my research problem: I suspect that these men's magazines are attempting to convey a way in which a man can achieve masculinity through the acquisition of certain attributes.

Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines by Gregory A. Daddis

<i>Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines</i> by Gregory A. Daddis

Playboy, Shūeisha, and the Birth of Men's Magazines in 1960s Japan

Playboy, Shūeisha, and the Birth of Men's Magazines in 1960s Japan

Penile Length Loss After Penile Implant Surgery

Simply put, size matters. Our culture's obsession with penile length is evident with just a simple search engine query – which will send one into a deep rabbit hole of “scientific studies” published by a potpourri of medical journals, men's magazines, and clickbait-style media aggregators. Correlations are often proposed between penile size parameters and characteristics such as height, ethnicity, and even shoe size. While there are indeed some legitimate studies, the popular—rather than scientific—media-driven stronghold on this topic highlights its cultural significance.

From Erotic Content to War Realities: Problem-Thematic Range of «Playboy Ukraine» Magazine

Introduction. Franchising magazines for men are one of the least researched segments of the Ukrainian media market. However, men’s magazines are quite interesting for research, because, like any media, they reflect reality, social processes, values, moral guidelines, and attitudes. One of the most famous men’s magazines in the world is Playboy magazine. Although a significant part of its content is indeed erotic photos, the magazine also provides the reader with interesting and useful information – news, interviews, analytics, and author’s journalism. Relevance of the study. The basis of our research is the author’s texts of the magazine «Playboy Ukraine», as they are a product of creativity of representatives of Ukrainian society, and therefore a reflection of its worldview, mentality, and local social processes from the middle of the country. The purpose of our research is to determine the problem-thematic range of the author’s texts of the franchise magazine for men «Playboy Ukraine». Methodology. The main research methods are content analysis and discourse analysis, which involve the identification of the author’s publications from among the content of the magazine issues, as well as the establishment of their thematic and content direction, author’s features of information presentation and evaluations as part of the general communication strategy of the publication. Results. Investigating the problem-thematic range of the magazine «Playboy Ukraine», we analyzed the author’s texts of the printed version of the magazine in the period from 2017 to the end of 2021, as well as issues published after February 24, 2022. We divided the author’s texts highlighted in the magazine into thematic groups: healthy lifestyle, psychology, social stereotypes, modern culture, travel. We paid special attention to the topic of quarantine. It was also discovered that with the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army, «Playboy Ukraine» magazine completely reformatted its content. The first military issue is dedicated to the events in Ukraine. It does not contain erotic photos and author’s texts, the publication presents many photos by well-known and unknown photographers that show the consequences of enemy shelling, people hiding in bomb shelters, the military, evacuation and Ukrainian cities that have just been liberated from occupation. The editors dedicated the next issue of «Playboy Ukraine» to art during the war. Conclusions. The thematic direction of the materials of the «Playboy Ukraine» magazine confirms the publication’s general focus on quality content. Therefore, the general problem- thematic range of the magazine reflects social processes and the surrounding reality, historical events, and realities of today, as well as a response to the informational tastes and interests of the audience. The perspective of further research consists in studying the problematic and thematic range of the author’s texts of the magazine in the context of historical events, as well as in comparison with the content of other franchise publications.

Female image in glossy magazines for men in Russia and abroad

The article deals with a comparative and educational analysis of the specifics of the presentation and functioning of a female image in advertising for men's glossy magazines MAXIM and Esquire in the USA, Russia and Sweden. As a result of typological analysis, it was revealed that MAXIM is a narrowly targeted publication of an erotic nature, Esquire is a publication of general interest. At the same time, magazines of the same brand in different countries are similar in audience orientation, purpose, main headings, frequency, only the circulation volume differs significantly. The results of the content analysis and the comparative method indicated that the American and Russian MAXIM often sexually objectifies a woman, presents her image in advertising through the prism of gender stereotypes. Esquire magazine in the USA, Russia and Sweden exploits female images much less often, trying to build an image of collegial relationships between the sexes.

Female image in glossy magazines for men in Russia and Abroad: education and class

The article deals with a comparative and educational analysis of the specifics of the presentation and functioning of a female image in advertising for men's glossy magazines MAXIM and Esquire in the USA, Russia and Sweden. As a result of typological analysis, it was revealed that MAXIM is a narrowly targeted publication of an erotic nature, Esquire is a publication of general interest. At the same time, magazines of the same brand in different countries are similar in audience orientation, purpose, main headings, frequency, only the circulation volume differs significantly. The results of the content analysis and the comparative method indicated that the American and Russian MAXIM often sexually objectifies a woman, presents her image in advertising through the prism of gender stereotypes. Esquire magazine in the USA, Russia and Sweden exploits female images much less often, trying to build an image of collegial relationships between the sexes.

Сравнительный анализ репрезентации женского образа в глянцевых журналах для мужчин в России, США и Швеции

На волне борьбы с сексизмом в США и развитием шведского феминизма стереотипные представления о женских ролях, эксплуатируемых в рекламе международных журналов MAXIM и Esquire, пересматриваются не только в упомянутых странах, но и в России. Несмотря на многочисленные исследования, вопрос о влиянии на аудиторию транслируемых в рекламе образов остается малоизученным. В связи с этим авторами поставлена цель выявить специфику репрезентации образа женщин в рекламе журналов, ориентированной на мужчин. Результаты контент-анализа с использованием сравнительно-сопоставительного метода показали, что американский и российский журнал MAXIM часто сексуально объективирует женщину, подает её образ в рекламе через призму гендерных стереотипов. Журнал Esquire и в США, и в России, и в Швеции значительно реже эксплуатирует женские образы, пытаясь выстроить образ коллегиальных взаимоотношений между полами. Сделан вывод о том, что репрезентация образа женщины в рекламе мужского глянца зависит от гендерной политики и актуальной информационной повестки дня страны, в которой издается журнал. Полученные результаты вносят вклад в исследование рекламы как отражения культуры современного общества.

ANALYSIS OF RECEPTION AND CRITICAL DISCOURSE OF THE EYECANDY RUBRIC ON ADULT MEN MAGAZINE

Eyecandy is a rubrik in the adult men's magazine “Popular”, featuring sensual content from many of its models, and what happens when the rubric is interpreted critically by female readers. When the workers and editors at the magazine are dominated by men who have full power in determining the value of women in a society's social life through the discourse that appears in it. Meanwhile, women are positioned as objects that do not have the power to determine these values. The purpose of this study is how audience reception interprets the perspective of critical discourse on the text wrapped in the pose of a woman's body shape in the eyecandy rubric in the December 2017 issue of "Popular" magazine. This research uses a qualitative approach with the study method of critical discourse reception by Norman Fairclough's model. The results of the research show that the text in the eyecandy rubric gives a sensual meaning, where that meaning still binds women as the main sexual commodity that is traded in the form of visual objects. The text is only a complementary narrative of the many sensual poses of female models. The production in the process of making this text is dominated by men, where men seem to understand very well how a text and images are used as representations of attractiveness that is able to attract their people, thus proving that women are objects of sexuality where the media constructs according to the wishes of their male readers.

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.

«Прием Гавриила» и американское эротическое воображение: Перевод как захват

This study of Pushkin's American reception takes as its point of departure a "technical" issue in English translations of the bawdy narrative poem "Gavriiliada" ("The Gabrieliad," 1821). How can the analysis of a translation error or the erroneous concretization of a "motor" image (Tynianov's term) that is obscured in the source text help us to understand the original and its subsequent reception both in literature and in the visual arts? Our focus is on the scene in which Pushkin's Satan is comically "mutilated" by his holy rival, as rendered in Walter Arndt's (1916–2011) translation of the "Gavriiliada" and in the Japanese artist Kinuko Craft's cycle of illustrations for that translation's publication in the Christmas 1974 issue of Playboy. The essay demonstrates that this provocative publication—which was a trilateral collective effort of the male translator, female illustrator, and male art editor—does not "replace" (per Tynianov), "misread" (Harold Bloom), or "mutilate" (Nabokov) the original, but "fills in" and reappropriates Pushkin's "ribald classic" by situating it in the aesthetic, visual and ideological context of an American men's magazine with pretensions to style that reached the peak of its popularity in 1974. What is more, the sacrilegious and bawdy plot of the "Gavriiliada" became a literary expression of Playboy's hedonistic religion.

DE MENINO A METROSSEXUAL

Este estudo aborda a construção da masculinidade na sociedade atual. Entendemos que a mídia tem um papel relevante na construção de identidades, influenciando hábitos e costumes, contribuindo, assim, para propagar a ideologia vigente da sociedade. Para tal, foram categorizados, especificamente, os sumários on line de três revistas masculinas durante o período de setembro de 2010 a junho de 2012. Os resultados sugerem a coexistência de diversos temas relacionados ao universo do homem contemporâneo, destacando-se estilo, cultura e lazer e sexo como indicadores importantes na construção da masculinidade na contemporaneidade.

ALAIR GOMES IN THE UNITED STATES

This article is mainly focused on the photographic work of Alair Gomes during the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. The analyses include photo essays published in the Performance,The Advocate and Advocate MEN magazines, as well as in Gay Sunshine journal and the Artists Almanac. The five photo essays feature a series of visual elements which characterize the work of Alair Gomes, most notably the sequential and multiple photographic images and print media as space of artistic production. This multiplicity of elements broadens the relationship established by his historiography between photography and homoeroticism. The proposition was to offer a new reading of Alair Gomes’ work, highlighting new aspects along the artistic path of his photographic work.

"Becoming the man you always wanted to be": Exploring the representation of health and masculinity in Men's Health magazine.

Men's health and lifestyle magazines are a popular medium through which hegemonic ideals of masculinity are displayed, influencing the way men behave and think about health (Crawshaw, 2007, Soc Sci Med, 65, 1606; Stibbe, 2004, Men Masc, 7, 31). This study conducted a critical discourse analysis of Australia's most popular men's health and lifestyle magazine, Men's Health, in order to understand how health is presented to men. Six issues were examined, from April 2016 to September 2016. Three themes supporting hegemonic masculine discourses were revealed: a forged physique, (hetero)sexual prowess and career dominance. A fourth theme, the new man, was also identified revealing a shift in attitudes towards nutrition and style. Despite this shift in the representation of masculinity, hegemonic ideals remain dominant in the construction of Australian masculinity in this popular men's health and lifestyle magazine. SO WHAT?: This study highlights the utility of Men's Health magazine in promoting health and brings into question whether the current representation of masculinity works towards improving or decreasing the health of Australian men.

Reflection of the Gender Problems of Society in Russian Journalism at the Turn of the 20th and 21st Centuries

The aim of the research was to analyze the stylistic tonality of the texts of mass media devoted to gender issues at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. The article reveals the results of the research, which testify to the peculiarities of images of men and women in Russian mass media, and the data obtained during the analysis of journalistic texts published between 1990 and 2010 became indicators of the sample of the material. Some existing and emerging gender stereotypes are being established, namely cultural and socially conditioned ideas, opinions on the qualities, attributes and norms of behavior of men and women issued in journalistic texts. The linguistic means of expressing gender stereotypes in the mass media are analyzed. The article analyzes the linguistic tools used in the mass media to evaluate men and women. An attempt is made to compare the linguistic means used in the formation of images of women in the men's magazines. The research methodology is based on understanding the mass media mission as an effective means of forming public opinion; depending on the tasks to be solved, a set of methods used: synchronous-descriptive, synchronous-comparative, content-analysis. The method of textual and discursive analysis with the use of cognitive-pragmatic methodology and functional-stylistic analysis of the text are also used. Today it is the media that become a special agent of gender socialization, actively promoting gender stereotypes formed in society, exploiting them endlessly, often with their modification, which also contributes to the creation of new stereotypes. For modern mass media research, it is becoming increasingly important to take into account concepts, stereotypes as the basis for creating ideology in the modern media space. The latter ones presuppose a targeted influence on the recipient's consciousness from the addressee's side with the help of a pre-defined idea that has a generalized character that orient mass consciousness in the given direction through stereotyped nominations. The conclusions, which were made with the help of this research, are reduced to the statement of the tendentiousness of presenting gender issues in modern Russian mass media. The publications are mainly conducted in a key, far from respectful for both men and women. Moreover, in the mass media, stereotypes of men and women that do not correspond to the true state of affairs in Russia and are not capable of creating tolerant relations between the sexes that are not capable of asserting the idea of equal rights and equal responsibility to the society of all Russian citizens outside the public are exploited, generated and replicated in the mass media depending on their gender. A well-thought-out media policy in covering gender issues is needed, aimed at the formation of healthy humane relations in the society.

Men and masculinity in men's magazines: A review

AbstractThis review article provides a thematic synthesis and overview of 30 years of research into the study of men and masculinity in men's magazines. Over 100 articles, book chapters, and books were reviewed to explore how scholars have approached the study of masculinity in such magazines and identify four major areas of inquiry: the commodification of masculinity; the relationship between sexism and misogyny in men's magazines and men's attitudes towards women; the vulnerability of men to, and the role of magazines in the construction of, men's body image anxieties; and the increasing sexualisation of men's bodies. The strengths and potential limitations of these four thematic approaches are identified, including an insufficiently nuanced account of the ways in which men might actually engage with images and ideas about masculinity in such magazines; an overly singular view of male sexuality that naturalises sexist and predatory behaviour; and an overemphasis on men's bodies as sites of vulnerability, risk, or crisis at the expense of more substantive considerations of the relationship between the representation of body modification practices and technologies, and men's embodied identities. The review concludes with an overview of the present field and some suggestions for future research.

Towards the westernized body: a popular narrative reinforced by men's lifestyle magazines in Indonesia

ABSTRACTThis paper will spotlight changing views with regard to Indonesian men's body aesthetics. It will explore how, in response to discourse contained in lifestyle magazines, the physical bodies of Indonesian men have become the primary mechanism through which to exercise agency. However, many local Indonesian customs consider men's agency to be dependent upon their ability to control bodily desire. The paper aims to give an overview of how modernization and westernization as contemporary conditions in postcolonial Indonesia serve as the background to the narratives provided by men's lifestyle magazines. In order to provide an insight into how modern white narratives are valued in Indonesia, I will begin by examining the history of Dutch colonialism as a basis for racial classification. Proceeding, I will discuss how that history relates to contemporary practices of social stratification: the belief that being married to a westerner will bring perfection to one's descendants’ genes; the trend of consuming special vitamins and formulas that will change particular parts of the body; and the assumption that having western genes will bring both success and wealth. Moreover, I will also discuss the ways in which the magazines define the “ideal” body, and how that “ideal” body thus becomes the hegemonic body – one that functions as the gateway for men to achieve a good life.