It featured Gary Oldman on the cover and had pieces on Paul Weller, Eric Cantona, Sampdoria, Hotel Sex, Withnail and I and much more. There’d never been a magazine like it, and although it spawned a worldwide publishing market with copyists like FHM and Maxim, there’s never really been a magazine like it since.

Men's magazines Loaded and Stuff have announced they are no longer putting semi-naked women on their covers. Is this really a sign that men's tastes are changing, asks Tom Fordy. 'As the world moved on, the mags seemed to be stuck in the past'Photo: Alamy. This week, loaded magazine announced it will dump its glamour modelsin an effort to clean up its act.

When the 'Noughties' are remembered, lads' mags will be among the cultural icons that tell an important story about the status of women at the time. Adorning supermarket shelves for well over a decade, magazines like Nuts, Zoo and Loaded epitomised an era that sneered at feminism and feminists. The degrading, pornified cover images of women - mockingly dubbed ironic and 'harmless fun' - became part of the daily visual landscape for the British public as they went about everyday errands like grocery shopping and paying for petrol.

It was the original "lads' mag" – but now Loaded magazine has followed Stuff in dropping cover models. The Evening Standard reports that its latest publisher has made the move after deciding the raunchy covers were"lowering the tone". The magazine featured both men and women on its cover in the decade after its 1994 launch by IPC – you can see some classic covers here – but a revamp in 2005 boosted the flesh content in an effort to compete with Zoo and the now-defunct Nuts.

Stuff magazine is dropping the scantily-clad cover stars. Photo: Joe Loong on Flickr, via CC. Sexism is dead. I don’t want anyone to get ahead of themselves but the UK has definitely sorted gender equality out and it’ll soon spread to the rest of the world. Probably by around lunch time tomorrow.

Have lad mags finally grown up? The Londoner was surprised to see that the relaunched cover of Loaded doesn’t contain a scrap of female nudity on the cover. Have they really decided to ditch the babes? “Yes — we’re going to be far more discerning and sophisticated from now on,” says a spokesman at Simian Publishing, which took over Loaded late last year.

Loaded magazine has re-launched with “zero-nipple tolerance” as it attempts to shed the “desperate” image it has developed since the turn of the millennium. The front page of its latest issue features the Gallagher brothers rather than a scantily-dressed woman, as has become the custom in recent years.

The relaunch cover of Loaded doesn't contain any nude lady pictures, and their new look isn't a one off. Hallelujah! According to The Evening Standard, a spokesperson from Simian Publishing, which took over Loaded late last year, said they'd made a conscious decision to remove naked women from their covers.