June 2010 cover |
|
| Editor | Suraya Sidhu Singh |
|---|---|
| Categories | Women's magazines |
| Frequency | Quarterly / biannually[1] |
| First issue | June 2009 |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Website | Filament |
| ISSN | 2041-1472 |
Filament is a quarterly magazine aimed at women, showcasing erotic photographs of men. Filament professes, through its tagline, to be "The thinking woman's crumpet". Unlike other magazines for women that have featured solely muscular men, Filament features a wide variety of men.[2] Alongside erotic photographs the magazine also includes discussion on topics not only related to sex but to other aspects of life. Since "Men's magazines regularly mixed aspirational and intelligent content with high-brow erotica (...)"[2] Filament attempts to replicate this in a magazine for women.
The inspiration for the magazine according to their website is that:
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.[3]
The magazine is published in the United Kingdom and is available for purchase worldwide through their website and selected retailers[4].
Contents |
Filament is a magazine for women which alongside its erotic aspects (images of men and erotic fiction) offers coverage on topics related to sex and those that are unrelated to sex. For example the first issue contains an ethical discussion on Hardcore and Softcore pornography, and etiquette tips alongside atheist parenting. This in turn relates to their goal of creating a magazine for women with intelligent discussion similar to men's magazines. It further chooses to distance itself from typical female magazines by not covering topics such as dieting, celebrity gossip, fashion and cosmetics.
The magazine features both explicit and non-explicit photography of men. The magazine presents photography of men designed for women, as distinct from that designed for gay men, which has been traditionally simply been repackaged for women in magazines such as Playgirl. The magazine uses academic and primary research findings about the types of men and photography that more women prefer both to guide photographers and to assess erotic photography for publication.[5]
Reactions to Filament have been both positive and negative. Voxpops with women undertaken by New Zealand current affairs programme Close Up were strongly positive[6], whereas those undertaken by British chat show The Wright Stuff were mainly negative[7]. Many blogs have been positive in their reception of the magazine citing it as "a highly-researched, beautifully bound publication chock full of both saucy males posing for the camera and intelligent articles"[8] with "not just your emaciated pretty boys, they cover quite a range of the male form"[9] and saying that "the articles, interviews, short fiction and poetry pages are top notch"[10].
In August 2009 Filament magazine began a campaign to become the first UK women's magazine to publish an erection pictorial, after the printers of its first issue declined to print the second if it contained such images. Filament sought to sell 328 further copies of the first issue to finance changing printer, and succeeded [11]. The campaign attracted widespread support, including high-profile figures such as Zoe Margolis and Warren Ellis, and highlighted a double-standard in the print and distribution industry, where explicit female nudity is widely accepted but publishers like Filament experience "cockblocking"[12].