Walmart has decided to remove Cosmopolitan magazine from its checkout lines going forward to keep what it calls “sexually explicit material” out of the hands of children.
The magazine will still be available in Walmart stores but will be shelved in the store’s regular magazine racks rather than at checkout lines where children could pick it up and read it, The Wrap reported.
The move comes after lobbying group the National Center on Sexual Exploitation said it found the content to be inappropriate for shoppers, especially children.
The organization took credit for Walmart’s decision, saying in a statement, “Protecting minors from the sexually explicit material that Cosmopolitan embodies and perpetuates has been a long term priority of NCOSE,” The Wrap reported.
“You can go through and buy your groceries with your family knowing you won’t have to be exposed to this graphic and often degrading and offensive material,” NCOSE Vice President of Advocacy and Outreach Haley Halverson said, USA Today reported.
Cosmopolitan Editor Helen Gurley Brown took the once-family-oriented magazine and rebranded it in 1965 to be a publication targeted to single women that discusses sex openly. The magazine has continued to push the envelope by encouraging readers to watch pornography and engage in various types of risky sex including anal sex, violent sex, public sex, and more, The Wrap noted.
NCOSE Executive Director said the magazine’s removal from Walmart checkout lines is especially important in the #MeToo era.
“Cosmo sends the same messages about female sexuality as Playboy,” she said in a release, The Wrap reported. “It places women’s value primarily on their ability to sexually satisfy a man and therefore plays into the same culture where men view and treat women as inanimate sex objects.”
Twitter users seemed to support the move.
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