A feminist writer has attacked the Beatles for taking pop music away from girls and making it the 'music of men'.

Amanda Marcotte slammed the Fab Four's seminal album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year, because it 'repelled the female gaze.'

Marcotte, who writes for left-wing US website Salon, 'resents' Sgt Pepper because it transformed the Beatles from being a band teenage girls could enjoy to 'respectable art' aimed at 'grown men'.

Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was ground-breaking in its musical daring and sold 32million copies

The writer claimed that when Beatlemania first took the world by storm in the early 1960s, teenage girls were roundly mocked for their hysterical fandom - which she described as an 'uncorking of repressed lust.'

Marcotte added that teenyboppers liked Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr because they wanted to 'f*** the Beatles'.

However, she claimed the change in the Liverpudlian band's image, specifically on their album cover, to musicians in 'goofy-looking uniforms' meant their music was ripped away from their teenage fanbase.

Amanda Marcotte said she resented Sgt Pepper 'because it helped cement this notion that music for girls is silly and music for men is artistically significant'

She wrote on Salon: 'Sgt. Pepper' is a good pop record, don't get me wrong.

'But it's a record I resent, because it helped cement this notion that music for girls is silly and music for men is artistically significant.

'It's a notion that is doubly appalling because history shows, time and time again, that girl-tastes are the ones that are ahead of the curve.'

Her comments are sure to enrage Beatles fans, with the 1967 hit regarded as one of the band's finest and most popular albums.

Sgt Pepper also sold 32 million copies and is often rated one of the best of pop albums of all-time.