Thread by @WingsScotland

I'm afraid this is a load of shite. Funnily enough, just yesterday I'd noticed that the last few issues of FHM (2014/15) were still available on Readly, and I had a look over them with a committed feminist of my acquaintance.

https://twitter.com/TheMoominmama/status/1636681404623798272

FHM's motto was "It's great to be a man", and it did its best to uphold it. And that certainly did involve a lot of scantily-clad ladies on the front cover. (Compare to modern-day Esquire, which is an almost totally female-free zone.)

But there was surprisingly little of that inside. (Not NONE - check out the extraordinary photographic aesthetics on this very saucy shot of Helen Flanagan, and the pics of "the world's sexiest behavioural psychologist" - but a pretty small proportion of the pagecount.)

Most of the magazine was just full of FUN STUFF FOR MEN.

Remember, this is just eight years ago - all these pics are from the September 2014 issue. There wasn't much indyref coverage, but there was lots of completely harmless amusement for young males. (With the odd gratuitous bikini model. The HORROR.)

It's mostly very well-written, and while it's hardly a thoughtful treatise on femininity, the tone - as with nearly all "lad mags" is one of awed worship of women, not misogyny. Focused on the pretty ones, sure, but with no darker edge.

But mostly it's just a really fun read to brighten your day. There are more serious articles scattered through, but mostly it just wants to give you a laugh and cheer you up.

And it wasn't scared to tackle the big issues.

The message for its young male readers was one of positivity and empowerment. You can do stuff! It's possible if you just try! Go and work in Europe! Don't be scared of bad men! Eat healthily and drink low-alcohol-beer!

Contrast all this with women's magazines, whose primary message was and still is "YOU'RE FAT AND UGLY AND UNFASHIONABLE AND BORING! HERE'S LOTS OF STUFF YOU NEED TO BUY TO FIX IT SO YOU DON'T DIE ALONE!

The last time Esquire had a woman in her bra on the cover was Kate Winslet (then 40) in November 2015. But see if you notice anything about the interview.

I'll give you a minute to see if you spot it. But here's the shit Esquire readers have to endure now.

Honestly, about 50% of the pagination is watch adverts or articles about watches.

Like, how many fucking watches am I meant to be buying every month?

The few bits that aren't about watches are about sensible furniture, banking and personal grooming. (And watches.) What's more FUN than a Chantecaille Gold Energising Eye Recovery Mask or a Jaxon Lane Enzyme Powder Face Wash?

(If you think I'm comparing apples and oranges here, I worked quite a bit for Esquire in the 1990s. It was basically exactly the same as FHM except maybe 10% more intelligent.)

But I'm getting sidetracked by all the watches. Point is, FHM and its ilk were *not* primers for misogyny. If anything, modern-day men's mags that don't consider a single woman worthy of appearing in their pages are the misogynists. Women are invisible to them.

Literally the ONLY female person in that entire issue of Esquire was Elliot Page, and only because they deemed her to be actually a man. A promotion!

FHM et al (and obviously there were gradations - some were cruder than others, and Zoo was genuinely ugly, but it was the only one) taught young men that women are awesome, and if you were funny and interesting and sufficiently nice to them they might have sex with you.

Now young men have Pornhub instead, and Andrew tate and magazines like Vice telling them how best to choke women until they become your sex workers, and how if they can't get any they can just BE women, and be much better at it than stupid old actual women are.

I know which of those I think is the healthier messaging. /ENDS

PS: the "generation of toxic misogynists" isn't the one that was reading FHM and Loaded in the 90s and 2000s. It's people who weren't BORN until the late 90s and 2000s. Most of the woke misogynists are in their teens and early 20s ffs. Get a grip.

And the older Billy Bragg misogynists wouldn't have been seen dead reading fucking FHM.

The shift in male culture in those eight short years - coinciding exactly with the rise of transgender ideology - has been a turn very very very much for the worse.