{{short description|British and Irish subculture}} '''Lad culture''' (also '''the new lad''', '''laddism''') was a media-driven, principally British and Irish subculture of the 1990s and the early 2000s. The term ''lad culture'' continues to be used today to refer to collective, boorish or misogynistic behaviour by young heterosexual men, particularly university students.<ref name=BristolTab />
In the lad culture of the 1990s and 2000s, the image of the "lad"—or "new lad"—was that of a generally middle class figure espousing attitudes typically attributed to the working classes. The subculture involved heterosexual young men assuming an anti-intellectual position, shunning cultural pursuits and sensitivity in favour of drinking, sport, sex and sexism. Lad culture was diverse and popular, involving literature, magazines, film, music and television, with ironic humour being a defining trope. Principally understood at the time as a male backlash against feminism and the pro-feminist "new man", the discourse around the new lad represented some of the earliest mass public discussion of how heterosexual masculinity is constructed.<ref name=Gill />
Lad culture as a mainstream cultural phenomenon peaked around the turn of the millennium<ref name=BBC /> and can be seen as going into decline as the market for lad mags collapsed in the early 2000s, driven by the rise of Internet.<ref name=MaximEnd /> Nonetheless, the stereotype of the ''lad'' continued to be exploited in advertising and marketing as late as the mid-2010s.<ref name=Underscore />
Though the term "lad culture" was predominantly used in Britain and Ireland, it was part of a global cultural trend in the developed English speaking world. The title of a 2007 book by the gender studies academic David Nylund about USA Sports Radio, "Beer, Babes and Balls" mirrors the three stereotypical interests of the "lad".<ref name=Nylund/>
The American term ''bro culture'' is closely related, though it originated around two decades later than the term ''lad culture'' and therefore should be understood against a different cultural context.<ref name="Ngram" />
==In popular culture== Lad culture did not emerge organically as with earlier British male sub-cultures such as the mods of the 1960s; rather it was a media creation. The term "new lad" was first coined - as a response to then popular concept of the ''new man'' - by journalist Sean O'Hagan in a 1993 article in the magazine'' Arena''. The concept was developed and sustained across a diverse range of media: there was a literary component - lad lit;<ref name=Britpop /> it was closely associated with the musical style Britpop<ref name=Britpop /> and with certain television shows and stand-up comedians; a number of glossy, violent films in the later 1990s were also popularly linked to lad culture. Most important in shaping and popularising lad culture, though, was the ''lad mag'', a new style of lifestyle magazine for young, heterosexual men that became suddenly popular in the mid-1990s.
===Lad mags=== {{Main |Lad mag}}
Lad mags included ''Maxim'', ''FHM'' and ''Loaded''.
===Television=== ''Men Behaving Badly'',<ref name=Edwards /><ref name="Bsuicide">{{cite news|url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/475253.stm|date=17 October 1999|title=Health: Lad culture blamed for suicides|work=BBC News|publisher=BBC}}</ref> ''Game On'' and ''They Think It's All Over'' were 1990s television programmes that presented images of laddishness dominated by the male pastimes of drinking, watching football, and sex.
===Film=== Lad culture grew beyond men's magazines to films such as ''Snatch'' and ''Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.''
==Irony== Lad culture was strongly associated with an ironic position. The strapline of the leading lad mag ''Loaded'' was "for men who should know better". The BBC in a 1999 review called "Our Decade: New Lad Rules the World" identified that one of the key concepts associated with lad culture (alongside curry and foreign stag weekends) was "anything being acceptable if its "ironic"."<ref name=BBC /> Humour in lad mags and in television comedy was a major element of lad culture: the ironic position allowed comedians to both identify themselves as opposed to and, at the same time, indulge in racist, sexist and homophobic jokes.
Part of the ironic position can be seen in relation to the term ''lad'' itself. Despite the ubiquity of lad culture in the media of the 1990s there was no expectation that real, individual men would seriously identify themselves as ''lads'': to do so would be to invite ridicule.<ref name=Slate>See for instance, {{cite web | last=Chiasson | first=Dan | title=The literature of Maxim. | website=Slate Magazine | date=9 August 2004 | url=https://slate.com/culture/2004/08/the-literature-of-maxim.html | access-date=13 March 2022}}</ref> This was a form of distinctively British class play: middle {{nowrap|class{{tsp}}{{mdash}}{{tsp}}}}or aspiring middle {{nowrap|class{{tsp}}{{mdash}}{{tsp}}}}men were playing at being working class. A 2012 National Union of Students report citing the academic John Benyon identified how "Uncensored displays of masculinity during the 1990s were deemed by those involved to be ironic by their very nature. He [Benyon] highlights how the magazine Loaded consciously reduced working class masculinities to jokes, interest in cars and the objectification of women, and dismissed criticisms as humourless attacks on free speech which failed to see the ironic nature of the representations."<ref name=NUS />
Oddly, the ''lad'' was both ironic and authentic. Irony was the ''lad's'' defining behaviours but the lad himself was often presented as the authentic form of masculinity. For example, ''GQ'' in a press-release from 1991 wrote, "GQ is proud to announce that the New Man has officially been laid to rest (if indeed he ever drew breath). The Nineties man knows who he is, what he wants and where he's going, and he's not afraid to say so. And yes, he still wants to get laid."<ref name=CondeNast>Conde Nast, Jan 1991, quoted in {{Citation | last = Gill | first = Rosalind | author-link = Rosalind Gill | contribution = Power and the production of subjects: a genealogy of the New Man and the New Lad | editor-last = Benwell | editor-first = Bethan | editor-link = Bethan Benwell | title = Masculinity and men's lifestyle magazines |pages= 34–56 | publisher = Blackwell Publisher/Sociological Review | location = Oxford, UK Malden, MA, USA | year = 2003 | isbn = 9781405114639 | url = https://archive.org/details/masculinitymensl0000unse/page/34}}</ref>
==In gender studies== Though always principally driven by the media, the concept of the "lad" or "new lad" was widely discussed at the time as a male backlash to feminism and changing gender norms. For example, the writer Fay Weldon claimed in 1999 that, "laddishness is a response to humiliation and indignity ... the ''girl-power''! ''girl-power''! female triumphalism which echoes through the land".<ref name=Weldon />
The press frequently presented the new lad in opposition to a slightly earlier media construct, the "new man", who supposedly eschewed traditionally male interests as part of his feminist values, a man who "has subjugated his masculinity in order to fulfill the needs of women" and has a "passive and insipid image".<ref name=AITS /><ref name=Knowles /><ref name=adams /><ref name=Gill /> Both the "new lad" and the "new man" were - it was always implicitly assumed - heterosexual and cisgender.
Many feminists were robust in their criticism of lad culture. Naomi Wolf stated: "the stereotypes for men attentive to feminism were two: Eunuch, or Beast",<ref name=Wolf /> in the ''New Statesman'', Kira Cochrane argued that "it's a dark world that ''Loaded'' and the lad culture has bequeathed us".<ref name=Cochrane /> Joanne Knowles of Liverpool John Moores University wrote that the "lad" displays "a pre-feminist and racist attitude to women as both sex objects and creatures from another species".<ref name=r1/>
An article in ''Frieze'' magazine proposed a psychoanalytic reading of the new lad phenomenon: {{Blockquote |text="Laddism ... pretend[s] to be endearingly naughty ... Women, faced with lads, are supposed to raise their eyes to heaven in mock despair, thus becoming matriarchal figures who grant their grudgingly but secretly amused blessing ('boys will be boys!') to the sealed male world of laddism. As a heterosexual construct, in which men become little boys with adult desires, and women become their passive but sexually available mothers, laddism is straight from the darker chapters of a psychoanalyst's hand-book." |multiline=yes |author=Michael Bracewell |title="A Boys own Story" |source=''Frieze Magazine'' (1996)<ref name=Frieze/> }}
Other writers saw less new about the lad. Nylund, in his 2007 "Beer, Babes and Balls" discussion of parallel developments in American popular culture, identifies "a return to hegemonic masculine values of male homosociality".<ref name=Nylund /> Other writers observed that social constraints simply meant that "it is easier to be a lad rather than a new man in most workplaces".<ref name=Holland /> Meanwhile, the lad could be seen as the ongoing reaction to a far older perceived threat from women to men's freedom, one that predated feminism: the lad image was "a refuge from the constraints and demands of marriage and nuclear family".<ref name=Genz />
==Social studies== A study by Gabrielle Ivinson of Cardiff University and Patricia Murphy of the Open University identified lad culture as a source of behavioural confusion,<ref name=Ivinson /> and an investigation by Adrienne Katz linked it to suicide and depression.<ref name="Bsuicide"/> A study of the architecture profession found that lad culture had a negative impact on women completing their professional education.<ref>{{cite news|author=Gates, Charlie|date=2003-07-11|title=Lad culture forces women to quit: RIBA-funded study looks at reasons behind profession's high female drop-out rate|work=Building Design|volume=1587|page=3}}</ref> Commentator Helen Wilkinson believes that lad culture has affected politics and decreased the ability of women to participate.<ref>{{cite news|author=Wilkinson, Helen|date=1998-08-07|title=The day I fell out of love with Blair|work=New Statesman|volume=127|pages=9–10}}</ref>
In 2013, the UK National Union of Students released a study on lad culture in UK universities, authored by Alison Phipps and Isabel Young from Sussex University. This study found laddish behaviours to be widespread in sports and social settings amongst male students. It defined lad culture as a group or 'pack' mentality residing in activities such as sport, heavy alcohol consumption and 'banter' which was often sexist, misogynistic, racist or homophobic. It also warned that some laddish behaviours constituted sexual harassment, and could create the conditions for more extreme forms of sexual violence. The UK's largest student union then warned in a 2015 study that universities were failing to address the issue of lad culture, with almost half (49%) of all universities having no policy against discrimination due to sexuality, or anti-sexual harassment policies.<ref>{{cite news|author1=Joe Williams|title=British universities failing to tackle homophobic "lad culture"|url=https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/07/27/british-universities-failing-to-tackle-homophobic-lad-culture/|access-date=27 July 2015|work=PinkNews|date=27 July 2015}}</ref>
==Related terms and uses== The word "'''ladette'''" was coined to describe young women who take part in laddish behaviour. Ladettes are defined by the ''Concise Oxford Dictionary'' as: "Young women who behave in a boisterously assertive or crude manner and engage in heavy drinking sessions."<ref name=COD> {{cite news |title=Ladettes enter dictionary |url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1434906.stm |publisher=BBC News |date=12 July 2001}}</ref> As of 2022, the term is no longer widely used.<ref name=Ngram />
The term "lad" is also used in Australian youth culture to refer to the Eshay subculture which is more similar to the chav or football casual subcultures, rather than the middle class student subculture the term refers to in the United Kingdom. Australian lads wear a distinctive dress code, consisting of running caps and shoes combined with striped polo shirts and sports shorts. They frequently use pig latin phrases in conversation,<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life/tribes-of-the-sydney-20100106-lv15.html|title=Tribes of the Sydney|author=Sacha Molitorisz|date=7 January 2010|newspaper=Sydney Morning Herald|access-date=4 July 2016}}</ref> for example "Ad-lay" to refer to a fellow "Lad". Lad-rap is a growing underground hip hop scene in Australia.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/is-lad-rap-ready-to-save-aussie-hip-hop/|title=Is Lad Rap Ready to Save Aussie Hip Hop?|last=Barker|first=Rei|date=2014-11-28|work=Noisey (music by Vice)|access-date=4 July 2016}}</ref>
==See also== {{Columns-list|colwidth=22em| *Association football culture *Bloke *Bro (subculture) *Casual (subculture) *Gender studies *''Ladette to Lady'' *Manosphere *Masculism *Rake (character) *UNILAD *Toxic masculinity }}
==References== {{Reflist|30em |refs=
<ref name=Knowles>Knowles, Joanne ''Nick Hornby's High Fidelity'' (2002) pp. 16, 39 {{ISBN|0826453252}}</ref> <ref name=adams>{{cite web |url=https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2005/jan/23/features.review7 |title=New kid on the newsstand |author=Tim Adams |date=23 January 2005 |work=The Observer |publisher=Guardian News and Media Limited |access-date=20 November 2009}}</ref>
<ref name=AITS>{{cite book|title=An Introduction to Sociology: Feminist Perspectives|url=https://archive.org/details/introductiontoso00wall|url-access=limited|author1=Pamela Abbott |author2=Claire Wallace |author3=Melissa Tyler|year=2005 }}</ref>
<ref name=BBC>{{cite web | title=Our Decade: New Lad rules the world | website=BBC News | date=8 March 1999 | url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/02/99/e-cyclopedia/289778.stm | ref={{sfnref | BBC News | 1999}} | access-date=11 March 2022}}</ref>
<ref name=BristolTab>See eg {{cite web | last=James | first=Abbie | title=It's time to stop normalising uni 'Lad Culture' and realise it's part of the problem | website=The Bristol Tab | date=14 March 2021 | url=https://thetab.com/uk/bristol/2021/03/14/its-time-to-stop-normalising-uni-lad-culture-and-realise-its-part-of-the-problem-44660 | access-date=26 March 2022}}</ref>
<ref name=Cochrane>{{cite news|last=Cochrane|first=Kira|author-link=Kira Cochrane|url=http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/08/lad-culture-cochrane-loaded|title=The dark world of lads' mags|work=New Statesman|date=23 August 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081201190804/http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2007/08/lad-culture-cochrane-loaded|archive-date=1 December 2008}}</ref>
<ref name=Edwards>{{cite book|title=Cultures of Masculinity|url=https://archive.org/details/culturesmasculin00edwa|url-access=limited|last=Edwards|first=Tim|pages=[https://archive.org/details/culturesmasculin00edwa/page/n49 39]–42|year=2006|publisher=Routledge|isbn=0-415-28480-5}}</ref>
<ref name=Frieze>{{cite news | last=Bracewell| first=Michael | title=A Boy's Own Story |issue=29 |date=1996 |work=Frieze Magazine |url=http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/a_boys_own_story/ | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121024210700/http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/a_boys_own_story/ | archive-date=24 October 2012 | url-status=dead | access-date=20 March 2022}}</ref>
<ref name=Genz>{{cite book | last1 =Genz |page=142 |first1 = Stéphanie | last2 = Brabon | first2 = Benjamin A. | title = Postfeminism: Cultural Texts and Theories | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yUGpvXJe9NAC|year=2009|publisher=Edinburgh University Press | isbn = 9780748635801 }}</ref>
<ref name=Gill>"Where once men represented the invisible, unmarked norm of human existence and experience, today they are hyper-visible as a gendered group, with academics, marketing executives, journalists and others devoting considerable attention to masculinity or masculinities." {{Citation | last = Gill | first = Rosalind | author-link = Rosalind Gill | contribution = Power and the production of subjects: a genealogy of the New Man and the New Lad | editor-last = Benwell | editor-first = Bethan | editor-link = Bethan Benwell | title = Masculinity and men's lifestyle magazines |pages= 34–56 | publisher = Blackwell Publisher/Sociological Review | location = Oxford, UK Malden, MA, USA | year = 2003 | isbn = 9781405114639 | url = https://archive.org/details/masculinitymensl0000unse/page/34}}</ref>
<ref name=Holland>Samantha Holland, ''Alternative Femininities'' (2004) p. 29 {{ISBN|1859738087}}</ref>
<ref name=Ivinson>{{cite press release|url=http://www.bps.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/releases$/iccpl-2001$/lad-culture-and-boys-confusion-about-behaviour$.cfm|date=2001-06-28|title=Lad Culture and Boys' Confusion about Behaviour|publisher=The British Psychological Society|location=Leicester, England|access-date=2006-10-18|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070311043412/http://www.bps.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/releases$/iccpl-2001$/lad-culture-and-boys-confusion-about-behaviour$.cfm|archive-date=2007-03-11|url-status=dead}}</ref>
<ref name=MaximEnd>{{cite magazine | last=Nazaryan | first=Alexander | title=Nobody Wants to Buy Maxim: How the Lad Mags Met Their End |magazine=The Wire |date=2013-07-09 |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2013/07/nobody-wants-buy-maxim-how-lad-mags-met-their-end/313490/ |access-date=19 Dec 2021 |via=The Atlantic}}</ref>
<ref name=Nylund>{{cite book | last = Nylund | first = David | title = Beer, babes, and balls: masculinity and sports talk radio | publisher = State University of New York Press | location = Albany | year = 2007 |page=9 | isbn = 9780791472378 }} Nylunds's pun on the word "balls" also nods to the homosociality that was often remarked on as a major under-current in lad culture.</ref>
<ref name=Ngram>{{cite web |title=Google Ngram Viewer: Ladette, New Lad, Lad Culture, Bro Culture |url=https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=ladette%2Cnew+lad%2Clad+culture%2Cbro+culture&year_start=1980&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true |access-date=8 March 2022}}</ref>
<ref name=NUS>{{Cite web |last1=Phipps |last2=Young |title="That's what she said: Women students' experiences of 'lad culture' in higher education" |date=2012 |url=https://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/49011/1/That%27s_what_she_said_full_report_Final_web.pdf#:~:text=It%20seems%20that%20%E2%80%98lad%20culture%E2%80%99%20is%20suddenly%20everywhere,structuring%20and%20understanding%20the%20way%20students%20have%20fun |publisher=NUS/University of Sussex}}</ref>
<ref name=Britpop>[https://www.jstor.org/stable/26421708 McCombe, J. (2014)]. "Common People": Realism, class difference, and the male domestic sphere in Nick Hornby's Collision with Britpop. ''Modern Fiction Studies'', 60(1), pp. 165–184. doi:10.2307/26421708</ref>
<ref name=r1>Dr Joanne Knowles in {{cite book | first=Kristina |last=Nelson |title=Narcissism in High Fidelity |date=2004 |isbn=0595318045 |pages=19, 372|publisher=iUniverse }}</ref>
<ref name=Underscore>{{cite web | title=The Death of British Lad Culture: What Does It Mean For Branding? - Branding Agency London | website=Underscore Branding Agency London | date=13 May 2016 | url=https://www.underscore.co.uk/the-death-of-british-lad-culture-what-does-it-mean-for-branding/ | access-date=13 March 2022}}</ref>
<ref name=Wolf>{{cite book|author=Wolf, Naomi |title=Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle For Womanhood|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rYQae9GaIU8C|year=1998|publisher=Random House of Canada|isbn=978-0-679-30942-0|page=222}}</ref>
<ref name=Weldon>{{cite book | last = Weldon | first = Fay | author-link = Fay Weldon |page=61 | title = Godless in Eden | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=T2O8feKasO0C | year = 1999 | publisher = HarperCollins Publishers | isbn = 9780007395026 }}</ref> }}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lad Culture}} Category:Counterculture of the 1990s Category:Counterculture of the 2000s Category:1990s in the United Kingdom Category:1990s in the Republic of Ireland Category:2000s in the United Kingdom Category:2000s in the Republic of Ireland Category:Adolescence Category:Anti-intellectualism Category:Drinking culture Category:Masculinity Category:Interpersonal relationships Category:Men's culture Category:Men's movement Category:Misogyny Category:Postmodernism Category:Slang terms for men Category:British subcultures Category:Youth culture in the United Kingdom Category:Middle class culture Category:Antifeminism Category:1990s neologisms