Good news, everyone – sexism's over! Yay! Loaded magazine, that Proustian madeleine of 90s laddism, has decided that from here on, it will be "far more discerning and sophisticated", by which they mean: "We will no longer be serving up several portions of tits on the cover of every issue because we looked at our circulation figures and that doesn't seem to be working any more."
And that's not all! Stuff – a magazine that always looked like it emerged from a JG Ballard novel with its niche fetishisation of semi-naked women holding tiny phones – has also decided to allow its models to put on some clothes.
"When the magazine launched in 1994 it was very much of its time, but it had got to the point where it was just lowering the tone. We're not going to have any more lewd content," a Loaded spokesman told London's Evening Standard this week, adding: "Mostly the change in content has come from our readers saying we'd lost touch with them." To herald Loaded's new au courant, to-the-bone style, this month's cover features a photo of the deeply relevant Oasis. (Poor Loaded – it really can't give up the 90s, can it? Maybe they should just rename it Everything You Hated About the 90s.)
But let's recap here: Loaded and Stuff readers no longer want to carry around magazines with naked women on the cover, thereby announcing their masturbatory habits to all the world. It's tacky, it's passé, it's "alienating", say Stuff's readers. No word yet on whether Loaded's cover lines will also change after a study discovered that readers found them indistinguishable from statements given by convicted rapists. But still, one step at a time, right? Sexism is over!
For about five minutes. And then, everything gets back to business as usual. On the same day Loaded announced that treating women like pieces of sexualised meat was OVAH, the pop singer Jake Bugg released an alternative video for his song, Messed Up Kids, which featured him whining into a microphone surrounded by three entirely naked women. Bugg apparently looked at how Robin Thicke has made a highly lucrative career out of being reviled as a massive idiot and thought, "Yeah. That'll do, pig." At least Robert Palmer let the women in his videos accessorise their lipstick with clothes.
"I think I lived a lot of men's dreams that day," Bugg said, when asked about the shoot, apparently unbothered by the irony that he is singing "messed up kids sell their body" while surrounded by young women who are doing just that. Or is the video enacting the song? I don't know. I'm just a woman. This is too complicated for my lady brain. Maybe I should ask my tits. They're the most important thing about me, you know.
It's interesting that Loaded has decided that cover nudity is out of step these days, because Loaded is wrong. Loaded championed the idea of ironic sexism in the 90s, a delightful concept that went hand in hand with ironic football loutism, ironic English patriotism and ironic liking of cack Britpop bands. Happy days, the late 90s. Loaded's mistake was, it stopped bothering with the veneer of irony, which in its case meant humour (it's not sexist if it's funny: the law according to lazy standup comedians). Instead, it just went for straight-out sexism veering increasingly close to porn. Because nothing says Christmas Issue better than two women rubbing their breasts together on the cover – right, Loaded? Anyway, boohoo for them, because ironic sexism is having quite the comeback, along with ironic banter ("#bantz") – and, according to Loaded, an ironic interest in Oasis.
Sexism clearly hasn't gone away, and – guess what? – it never will. Sexism is when a woman is videoed giving what tabloids call "sexual favours" to men in a bar in a Magaluf and she is called "a slag" but the men are called "lads", as happened this week (and as happened to a woman who went to an Eminem concert near Dublin last year, and as will happen again). We all know this is sexist – hell, even the Daily Mail admitted it knows this is A Bit Off. Awareness of what sexism is has never been greater, thanks to the return of feminism and call-outs of sexist acts on social media.
Ironic sexism is when someone deliberately exploits this awareness for attention. (You think you trolled Thicke on Twitter this week with the #AskThicke hashtag? He trolled you, my friends.) They believe a vague awareness of that offensive nature means anyone who finds their antics pathetic, stupid and indeed sexist is Just Not Getting the Joke. We saw this before, in the 90s with idiotic laddish culture, and we are seeing it again now. Back then, it was treated as a kind of release; now it is attention-seeking lechery dressed up as art (Bugg claims that his video is "a reference to the Electric Ladyland cover", as though cultural referencing is some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card as opposed to an admission of a total lack of originality.)
The biggest irony about ironic sexism is that it's not ironic at all. Irony is the use of words that mean the opposite of what you really think. Like it's bro-in-arms, hipster racism, ironic sexism isn't the opposite of sexism; it's an open admission of sexism, with the bonus confession of being quite thick. Or, indeed, Thicke.
Twitter: @HadleyFreeman
• This piece was amended on Monday 7 July to clarify that the study referring to cover lines which readers found similar to statements given by convicted rapists, included Loaded, but not Stuff; and that the women on Stuff covers were semi-naked not naked.
