Men’s Lifestyle Magazines: (Fake) Opposition to Women’s Magazines Cover Image

Czasopisma life-stylowe dla mężczyzn - (pozorna) opo-zycja dla prasy kobiecej
Men’s Lifestyle Magazines: (Fake) Opposition to Women’s Magazines

Author(s): Edyta Zierkiewicz
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: men’s lifestyle magazines; women’s magazines; masculinity

Summary/Abstract: Men’s lifestyle magazines are quite a new subgenre of popular magazines aimed at young, single, well-off and pleasure-oriented male readers. Editors of those magazines aspire to ‘reveal’ a sizable gap between their journals and up-market women’s magazines. However, the attributed differences are superficial or even illusory. Being assured that editors possess the secret of hegemonic masculinity, the reader believes that they want to share it with him. Nevertheless, at the deeper level of this media category there are latent processes of male reader feminization. The readers of those magazines are not only asked to succumb to insatiable material consumption but also get encouraged to focus on their body beautification. Moreover, men’s lifestyle magazines articulate keen resistance to feminist movement as well as a negative attitude toward gays and lesbians. The readers are asked to believe that the social world is still under the control of men as it used to be in the past. A reader who lacks self-confidence and a sense of security may want to be deceived in that way even at the price of becoming feminized.

  • Issue Year: 188/2008
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 45-76
  • Page Count: 31
  • Language: Polish