Lad culture (also the new lad, laddism) was a media-driven, principally British and Irish subculture of the 1990s and the early 2000s. The term lad culture continues to be used today to refer to collective, boorish or misogynistic behaviour by young heterosexual men, particularly university students. Game On and They Think It's All Over were 1990s television programmes that presented images of laddishness dominated by the male pastimes of drinking, watching football, and sex.
Film
Lad culture grew beyond men's magazines to films such as Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
Irony
Lad culture was strongly associated with an ironic position. The strapline of the leading lad mag Loaded was "for men who should know better". The BBC in a 1999 review called "Our Decade: New Lad Rules the World" identified that one of the key concepts associated with lad culture (alongside curry and foreign stag weekends) was "anything being acceptable if its "ironic"." This was a form of distinctively British class play: middle or aspiring middle men were playing at being working class. A 2012 National Union of Students report citing the academic John Benyon identified how "Uncensored displays of masculinity during the 1990s were deemed by those involved to be ironic by their very nature. He [Benyon] highlights how the magazine Loaded consciously reduced working class masculinities to jokes, interest in cars and the objectification of women, and dismissed criticisms as humourless attacks on free speech which failed to see the ironic nature of the representations."
In gender studies
Though always principally driven by the media, the concept of the "lad" or "new lad" was widely discussed at the time as a male backlash to feminism and changing gender norms. For example, the writer Fay Weldon claimed in 1999 that, "laddishness is a response to humiliation and indignity ... the girl-power! girl-power! female triumphalism which echoes through the land". Commentator Helen Wilkinson believes that lad culture has affected politics and decreased the ability of women to participate.
In 2013, the UK National Union of Students released a study on lad culture in UK universities, authored by Alison Phipps and Isabel Young from Sussex University. This study found laddish behaviours to be widespread in sports and social settings amongst male students. It defined lad culture as a group or 'pack' mentality residing in activities such as sport, heavy alcohol consumption and 'banter' which was often sexist, misogynistic, racist or homophobic. It also warned that some laddish behaviours constituted sexual harassment, and could create the conditions for more extreme forms of sexual violence. The UK's largest student union then warned in a 2015 study that universities were failing to address the issue of lad culture, with almost half (49%) of all universities having no policy against discrimination due to sexuality, or anti-sexual harassment policies.
Related terms and uses
The word "ladette" was coined to describe young women who take part in laddish behaviour. Ladettes are defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary as: "Young women who behave in a boisterously assertive or crude manner and engage in heavy drinking sessions." As of 2022, the term is no longer widely used. for example "Ad-lay" to refer to a fellow "Lad". Lad-rap is a growing underground hip hop scene in Australia.