Hadley Freeman - Never mind lads' mags, here are some other things I'd stick in a modesty bag
I have been thinking a lot about the term "empowerment" of late, which is one of those words, like "closure", that you almost never used to hear and it's now difficult to get through a magazine without encountering. After much philosophical pondering, I have come to the measured conclusion that it is, as we say in the linguistics world, bollocks. Whereas once this noble word referred to the bestowing of power, it now invariably refers to celebrity narcissism ("Beyoncé shows film clips which mistake female empowerment for narcissism," the Guardian, 20 August 2013) or, more commonly, as justification for women being reduced to sexual objects. As these are two especially tedious blights on the modern age, I think it would benefit us all if we simply did away with the word. You've had your time, "empowerment" – off you go to your retirement village in Andalucia. Have a lovely rest; you've earned it.
I have been wearying of "empowerment" for some time, and the times when I'm especially weary of it are when I discuss how weird it is that so many A-list female celebrities feel compelled to take their clothes off on the covers of magazines only for someone to retort that, actually, these women are "empowering themselves". Quite when the word "empowerment" became a euphemism for "offering oneself up as a wank object" is not recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary.
This linguistic debate took another turn this week with an interview in the Times with Seren Haf Gibson [paywall], a former glamour model, who is unimpressed by the campaign to ban lads' mags. Gibson is frustrated that some people claim she and other glamour models were "victims" when they were posing in lads' mags, and understandably so – what right do other people have to define her experience? It feels especially frustrating, she says, because when she was modelling and Nuts dubbed her the "Brilliant Booby Babe", her choice was celebrated, she recalls, "as empowering": "We were the power generation: you can be whoever you want to be … Everything you did was 'empowering'."
I have written before about how choosing one's path is a feminist act for a woman, but that doesn't mean the choice you make is, and if that choice results in you being branded as "Brilliant Booby Babe", it is fairly safe to assume that the only "empowerment" going on here is the empowerment of someone's bank account – maybe yours, more likely someone else's – by the use of your naked body. Posing on the cover of Nuts is to empowerment what Geri Halliwell and "girl power" are to feminism. I have no doubt Gibson doesn't feel victimised by her experience as a glamour model. That doesn't mean she was "empowered" either.
But if "empowerment" has been bludgeoned into meaninglessness, lads' mags, which once "empowered" so many women, are an orgasmic gasp away from to the recycling bin. Zoo and Nuts sales are down respectively 23% and 34% year on year and the escalating campaigns against themmay well hasten those numbers down further. The Co-op has insisted Nuts be placed in "modesty bags" (which sounds like the term one's gran might use for sanitary towels: "Your sister went out to buy some modesty bags"), which Nuts has refused to do. Tesco has struck what is described as "a modesty deal", saying that it has extracted promises from some lads' mags to make their covers more "modest".
Clearly lads' mags are embarrassing, indefensible and tragic. But how much difference will their inevitable demise make? Terri White, an ex-editor of Nuts, wrote in the Guardian that "the culture [lads' mags] helped to create can still be seen in town and cities all around the UK," and she's right. The world long ago overtook lads' mags, which is precisely why they're failing. So in order to staunch this problem, here is a list of other things I'd like to place "modesty bags" over, aside from the word "empowerment":
1. Any celebrity who becomes famous via the medium of a sex tape. While it's too late to save ourselves from Paris Hilton, Ray J and Kim Kardashian, we can take steps to ensure no more follow in their wake...
