‘Tits and ass and porn and fighting’

Abstract

This article examines the presentation of male heterosexuality in British soft-core pornographic and men’s lifestyle magazines, looking across these formats at the range of conventions and discourses they share. It maps out the key features of male heterosexuality in these publications, focusing on a sample of British magazines collected in June 2003 across both soft core and lifestyle formats, and on the new men’s weeklies, Nuts and Zoo Weekly, launched in January 2004. The depiction of the male body and its relation to sexual pleasure and the presentation and investigation of heterosexual activity are set in the broader historical context of men’s print media and the current socio-cultural context of sex and gender representation.