Word Spy - lad mag

lad mag

n. A magazine that focuses on sports, sex, and other topics of interest to young men. Also: lads' mag.
—lad-mag adj.

Example Citation:

Rolling Stone ... publisher Jann Wenner dumped a veteran managing editor and put in place Ed Needham, who ran the American version of FHM (For Him Magazine). That's one of the so-called "lad mags," the British invention that has taken the magazine world by storm lately.

FHM, along with Maxim, Stuff and a handful of imitators, focuses on booze, babes and partying. They're the print form of beer commercials, and they care little for the distant '60s, for that generation's values or its crusading journalism.
—Joel Brown, "Rolling Stone now gathers lots of moss," The Boston Herald, September 22, 2002

Earliest Citation:

Britain's only feminist monthly, Everywoman magazine, celebrates its 10th anniversary this month with a bumper birthday issue. ...

Occasional sense of humour failures, such as the vexed article about the new lad mag Loaded, are compensated for by the variety of voices and serious writing full of sense and stimulation. Everywoman's claim to be the voice of the modern women's movement in Britain is justified.
—Emma Brooker, "All that's new on this month's newsstands," The Guardian (London), March 6, 1995

Also:

So we need more sophisticated ways of nailing down the modern male animal, and two publishers have obligingly supplied them. Two new mags have just reached the news-stands: Attitude and Loaded.

Ironically the lads' mag, Loaded, comes from IPC, who already provide that section of the gay population who don't buy Just 17 with their constant diet of Take That pictures through the recently launched Now.
—Simon Fanshawe, "Whatever happened to the normal lads?," Evening Standard (London), April 20, 1994

Notes:

The word lad has been part of the English lexicon for well over 500 years. It usually refers to a youth or a young man, although a related sense — "a man of spirit and vigor" — has also been in the language for a long time. This second sense may have morphed into the newer sense that underlies today's phrase where (primarily in Britain) a lad is a macho, hard-drinking, sports-loving, testosterone-fueled, sex-obsessed young man.

Categories:

Books and Magazines
Men and Women

Posted on March 10, 2003