From mistress to hooker: 40 years of cartoon humor in men's magazines

Abstract

This paper explores mass media humor and its relationship to the changing nature of male sexual mores and prostituion. All cartoons in the two leading men's magazines, Esquire and Playboy, with prostituion as the topic were subjected to a content analysis. The change in content of these cartoons over the 40 year period covered is described.Mass communication theorists have argued that the content of poular culture both affects and is reflective of the larger society in which it is found (Blumler and Katz, 1974). Yet, there has been relatively little systematic empirical research directed toward these relationships. This has been in part a result of a preoccupation with the normative impact of the mass media on the cultural traditions of the social system (Rosenberg and White, 1971; Shils, 1970;Janowitz, 1968). The debate between those who see mass popular culture as essentially the debasing of the finer cultural sensibilities and those who see it as an integrative device which serves to tie the center and the periphery of society together has served to deflect research from an 42

An Analysis of Stereotype Refutation in Playboy by an Editorial Voice: The Advisor Hypothesis

“…Researchers have examined topics such as the hair color (Rich & Cash, 1993), age (Harris, Fine, & Hood, 1992), body shape (Singh, 1993;Wiseman, Gray, Mosimann, & Ahrens, 1992), and objectification (Bogaert, Turkovich, & Hafer, 1993) of centerfolds. The presence of sexual themes (Bradley, Boles, & Jones, 1979;Matacin & Burger, 1987) and violence (Malamuth & Spinner, 1980;Scott & Cuvelier, 1987) in cartoons has also been studied.…”