Editor Suraya Sidhu Singh Frequency Quarterly / biannually Final issue December 2011 | Categories Women's magazines First issue June 2009 Country United Kingdom | |
Filament was a quarterly erotic magazine aimed at women, showcasing photographs of a wide variety of men. Alongside pornographic material the magazine also included discussions on topics related to sex and other aspects of life. The magazine was published in the United Kingdom and ran for 9 issues, from June 2009 to December 2011.
Contents
Content
According to the magazine's website:
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.
The magazine featured both explicit and non-explicit photography of men designed for women, as distinct from that designed for gay men. The magazine claimed to use academic and primary research both to guide photographers and to assess erotic photography for publication.
Erection Campaign
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. The campaign attracted support from high-profile figures such as Zoe Margolis and Warren Ellis.
Critical reaction
Reactions to Filament were mixed. Voxpops with women undertaken by New Zealand current affairs programme Close Up were positive, whilst those undertaken by British chat show The Wright Stuff were mainly negative. Some blogs were 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" with "not just your emaciated pretty boys, they cover quite a range of the male form."