The Return of the Lad?

Despite the bold attempt in the 1990s by young Ladettes to colonise the space vacated by males morphing into the New Man, it appears that masculine Lad-ism is back with a vengeance, having retaken that terrain, and the Ladettes with it. Although the Unilad website has now closed down, the Laddish discourse has plenty of channels open, including other websites, blogs, magazines and even alternative student newspapers. When done cleverly, it manages to deploy complex irony to deflect criticism as Rachel Aroesti points out in the link above. Some sites, such as Toplad, don't set their aspirations quite so high, however, with some stomach-churning posts, although True Lad does appear to operate at a marginally greater elevation. Recent outbursts have included the City boys rugby tour email leak, where rich lads outlined a 13-point plan for a trip to the Dubai Sevens, which included cheating on their girlfriends, and last year's Andy Gray and Richard Keys sexism-on-air scandal, resulting in Gray's sacking (as a serial offender) and Keys' resignation and apology. The flames were fanned further by Jeremy Clarkson leaping to their defence and condeming their punishment for "heresy by thought". Which you might think odd, because perhaps the only even half-acceptable defence of most of this type of behaviour is that it is thought-less.

The New Lad: Half a Boy and Half a Man?

 Natasha Walter looks at the effects on women of this atavistic trend in her 2010 riposte Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism. On current evidence the second edition will need to be much thicker. Fnaar-fnaar.