Playboy for the LADIES!
Okay, it's not really Playboy...and it's not Playgirl. It's Filament. It's a UK magazine made for and about the "female gaze". If you were not an art, gender studies or philosophy major you may be unfamiliar with the more common phrase - "male gaze." The "male gaze" is the idea that in much of art and media (movies, paintings, photography, literature, etc) throughout history the representation of the female has been through the gaze of the heterosexual male. The assumption is that the perspective through the "male gaze" is different (not necessarily worse though) than the world might be through the "female gaze." The "gaze" within art effects which parts of our world are highlighted, what is sexualized and how it is sexualized, what we see and don't see. Men have made the vast majority of art we are exposed to, and thus the male gaze has an extremely disproportional hold over our cultural perspective (I would argue that it is such a hold that it is hard to even imagine that there is another perspective out there).
Filament wants to create a smart entertaining magazine from the perspective of the "female gaze" - particularly the hetero female gaze. That means there won't really be any lesbian-gaze inspired pics in this magazine, at least not for now. Although they realize that there are plenty of women - even hetero women - who may want to see sexualized pics of other women, they believe strongly that there is plenty of that out there already. What there is not - is plenty of sexualized pics of men specifically for and by women. Pics that include men as the object of desire and are, well, hot to women. I'm excited to see how it turns out. I also strongly believe there is a female-gaze gap in our artistic endeavors. In fact I'm making a movie that addresses that, among other things, as we speak (You might know it- it's called Science Sex and the Ladies).
Also - what I really love is that this magazine will not cover the traditional "female magazine" topics like beauty and shopping. Filament, and I have to agree, think there is enough of that out there. A magazine with thoughtful articles on a variety of interesting subjects that happens to include lovely, nude, sexualized men... I mean, really, what's not to love? The magazine gives this as their inspiration for this publication:
"Women are 10 times more likely than men to undergo cosmetic surgery and 43 times more likely than men to suffer an eating disorder. Is this because women are 'naturally' life-threateningly obsessed with their appearance, or is this in some way influenced by women's media? Many men's magazines don't discuss men's appearance, but nearly all women's magazines discuss women's appearance. Filament breaks this trend by covering a wide range of topics that inspire and engage, and giving you gorgeous boys the way you like to see them"
I have ordered some back issues and am waiting for them to come. I'll give you a full review when they get here. Check out their website HERE.