Lad mag was a term principally used in the UK in the 1990s and early 2000s to describe a then-popular type of lifestyle magazine for younger, heterosexual men, focusing on "sex, sport, gadgets and grooming tips".
[4] In 1994, linked to the wider development of lad culture, two new magazines found a formula that worked: IPC's Loaded and EMAP Metro's FHM.
This was a critical issue for sales: unlike pornographic magazines, lad mags could be sold to under 18s and did not have to be placed on the top shelf of newsagents, out of the reach of children.
Campaigners persuaded major newsagents that—due to the highly sexualized images of women on the covers—the magazines needed to be sold in opaque bags.
Contrasting the two gender constructs, Tim Edwards, a sociologist at the University of Leicester, describes the new man as pro-feminist, albeit narcissistic, and the new lad as pre-feminist, and a reaction to second-wave feminism.