Wal-Mart Removes Cosmopolitan Magazine from Aisles, Because Covers Are ‘Degrading’ and ‘Offensive’

We’ve all been there.  You’re checking out at the grocery store, with your young kid in tow, when you notice that your child is innocently looking at the magazines that the store has so helpfully put right at their eye level.

“Mommy, what does it mean that you should try to have ‘your best sex after forty?'”

Parent groups have long advocated that stores remove the sex-heavy magazines from places children can easily access, but with limited success.  Some grocery stores block the full covers from being seen — as in the above photo — but recently an activist group made even greater strides to keep the hyper-sexualized magazines away from children: Cosmopolitan is being removed from checkout lines at 5,000 Wal-Marts across the country.

“You can go through and buy your groceries with your family knowing you don’t have to be exposed to this graphic and often degrading and offensive material,” Haley Halverson, of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) said. “Instead, all of these magazines will be moved, in isolation, to the magazine racks.”

NCOSE had been working behind the scenes to help bring about this change, and it’s no coincidence that this change occurred after the #MeToo movement took hold.

“This is one less drop of hyper-sexualized media that is going to be bombarding people in their everyday lives, which does make a difference, especially in this Me Too culture that we’re living in, where we really want a culture that will respect women and ensure their dignity is understood,” he said.

USA Today reports on the change:

The Me Too movement gained momentum in October as bombshell reports from The New York Times and The New Yorker detailed decades of alleged sexual harassment and assault by producer Harvey Weinstein. Allegations against dozens of men in positions of power emerged in following weeks, and celebrities and non-celebrities alike flooded social media platforms with the hashtag #MeToo with their own stories of harassment, highlighting the depth of the problem.

USA TODAY’s exclusive industry-wide survey revealed  94% of women say they have experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault over the course of their careers in the entertainment industry.

It’s interesting that the #MeToo movement is having such ramifications throughout culture.

Image Credit: Steven Depolo

Hat Tip: USA Today