Origins
The term "new lad" was blended by journalist Sean O'Hagan in a 1993 article in Arena.
Part of "the postmodern transformation of masculinity...the 1990s 'new lad' was a clear reaction to the 'new man'...most clearly embodied in current men's magazines, such as Maxim, FHM and Loaded, and marked by a return to hegemonic masculine values of sexism male homosociality". At a time when "men saw themselves as battered by feminism", one could also consider that "laddishness is a response to humiliation and indignity...the girl-power! girl-power! female triumphalism which echoes through the land".
Lad culture now reaches beyond men's magazines to movies such as Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and to the TV sitcoms, Men Behaving Badly and Game On. The Men Behaving Badly and Fantasy Football League television programmes present images of Laddishness that are dominated by the male pastimes of drinking, watching football, and sex. These are presented as being ironic and "knowing". (The masthead of Loaded is "for men who should know better".)
The American equivalent has been termed "'Frat Boy Nation'...a backlash against the sensitive, pro-feminist male" of a very similar order.
Read more about this topic: Lad Culture
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)