A great speech by Michael Gove to the IPPR really set out a substantial vision for a Conservative education policy. I highly recommend that you check it out here. The use of education to strengthen society and strengthen the multiple relationships within society is a strong idea. Of particular interest is the emphasis placed on education to reduce the poverty gap in society and improve life chances and social mobility – something that I hope to return to in a later post. The speech confirmed Gove’s position as the leading thinker in the Parliamentary party. Nevertheless, I cannot resist taking issue with the part of the speech that has generated the most attention from the press. That is the assertion that ‘lads magazines’ such as Nuts and Zoo somehow play a contributory role to family breakdown and the social breakdown that goes with it.
I cannot agree with this for a number of reasons. Firstly, I’m not convinced that this is the sort of neo Puritanism that we should be indulging in. We should leave that kind of thing to Brown and Primarolo, with their desperately illiberal instincts, illustrated by policies such as the super casinos u turn and the reclassification of cannabis that flew in the face of all available evidence. It really shouldn’t be our place to tell people what to do and the kind of magazines they should be reading. The disengagement of a large number of young males and the political process is bad enough anyway without us seeking to lecture on their preferred choice of reading material. Can we be serious about reengaging young people in politics whilst at the same time taking every opportunity to sound disapproving about their social habits and magazines of choice? Secondly, I’m not at all convinced by the idea that there is any real link between lads mags and social breakdown. If anything, the magazines reflect society rather than leading it. The fact that 360,000 + guys buy these magazines every week and have done basically since they have launched suggests that these magazines reflect a demand in society that was there to be filled anyway. The magazines do not create social attitudes, they merely reflect them. Family breakdown long preceded the launch of magazines like Loaded, never mind the likes of Nuts and Zoo and is probably more connected with economic decline in working class communities and the splintering of community per se than anything that can be explained by the print media.
Thirdly, we are surely disrespecting the people who read Nuts and Zoo by suggesting that they somehow alter their behaviour based on the content of these rags. If anything, they represent a light hearted form of escapism (a much needed form of escapism given that a high proportion of the readership of these magazines are serving in Iraq orAfghanistan). They are objects of laddish banter and bravado – the kind of banter and bravado that has existed through the ages – rather than guidelines for the way people should live their lives. Nuts and Zoo represent a ‘phase’, both in terms of the people who read them and regarding reading trends. Loaded was all powerful 15 years ago in this same market but is now struggling badly to keep up. I also wonder why young straight males are the ones who have had their reading material condemned – some magazines aimed at young women treat men as sexual objects; gay magazines often exhibit a far greater degree of licentiousness than either Nuts or Zoo. Some men’s magazines, such as GQ, offer a higher brow read but similar attitudes towards women can occasionally be detected. We surely need to step away micromanagement of people’s personal preferences or a form of neo Puritanism that further alienates young adult males. Yes we do need to repair society, re-establish a sense of community and minimise social division and near educational apartheid. Attacking the reading preferences of young, working class males is surely only a distraction from this.
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