Posted in: Comics | Tagged: entertainment, fashion music glamour, female genital mutliation, fgm, for guys mag, warren ellis

And Finally… FGM

Published Tue, 04 Nov 2014 00:00:13 -0600

by Rich Johnston

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In 2005, the British satirical sitcom, Nathan Barley, from Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris parodied the then-unfamiliar hipster movement, with epsiode one famously taking fictitious hipster magazine and focus point of the show Sugar Ape…

And recreating it as suga RAPE.

Clearly such a thing could never actually happen in real life, it was just a satirical exaggeration of the attempt to pursue irony without regard to idiocy.

Well, comic book writer and novelist Warren Ellis was just followed on Twitter by a relatively new men's magazine, For Guys Mag. With the acronym…

As Warren says on his newsletter,

So, you know, there absolutely isn't any kind of war on women by male culture, we just name wank rags after female genital mutilation now. Nothing is at all weird here. The world is not bending at the edges. I'm just… I mean, I can't decide if it's actually a very extended Photoshop "gag," or if the editors thought it was transgressively funny, or if they really just didn't know what FGM means. I really, really do not even.

It's real, unironic, Canadian and onto issue 3 already… but it's not alone. Welcome to Fashion Glamour Music magazine.

Well, it looks at least se's trying to block out the logo.

I asked the editors of For Guys Mag if they were aware of the unfortunate confluence of acronyms and they told me,

Yes we are aware. I get your point. But an obscure, primitive ritual, however disgusting, cannot be allowed to trump our branding. But if it gets to be too much of a distraction we may stop using it. Thanks for the comment.

I'm going to go with "not that obscure" given that 125 million women in 27 countries are victims of female genital mutilation, and there are major high profile campaigns against the practice. Maybe it will only become a concern when it crosses over…

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/110485509[/vimeo]

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