That’s the question facing retailer according to a new U.K. gov’t report which is recommending just that. The concern is access by children to such magazines, which feature a bevy of topless or semi-nude models. Currently they are stocked on lower shelves rather than the higher ones where more traditional porn mags are kept.
Business Week covered the story earlier today:
“Lads’ mags” in Britain such as Nuts and Zoo should be placed on the top shelf in shops alongside pornography to prevent children being sexualized at a young age, a government report said.
IPC Media Ltd.’s Nuts magazine and Bauer Consumer Media Holdings Ltd.’s Zoo, which both feature picture of topless women alongside articles on soccer aimed at young men, should also not be sold to anyone under the age of 15, the report by psychologist Linda Papadopoulos recommended.
“At the moment you get them next to SpongeBob SquarePants,” Papadopoulos said in a telephone interview in London today, referring to the magazine of the children’s cartoon character made by Viacom Inc.’s Nickelodeon. “If they were on the top shelf, marked for age 15, there would be no pretense about what they are. They’ve got nipple counts, for goodness sake!”
In the 36 recommendations made in her Home Office- commissioned report, Papadopoulos said games consoles, computers and mobile phones should come with parental controls that can restrict access to adult and online content.
She also urged the government to forbid advertisements for work in the adult entertainment industry, such as lap dancing, being placed in branches of the state-run Jobcentre Plus, saying in her report that they can lead to a “normalization” of the job as a “viable career choice.”
Bratz dolls merchandized by MGA Entertainment Inc., some of which wear fishnet tights, are an example of presenting sexualized images to little girls, she said. “Bratz is a really good example of where people turn a blind eye,” she said.
A spokesman for Home Secretary Alan Johnson said he will respond to her report tomorrow, when it is officially published.
While I understand her concern, the better avenue for this struggle to take place would be within the culture itself. Moving the placement of the magazines misses the larger point (which she did mention) of the sexualization of the culture, particularly that of young girls. Peer pressure public campaigns have worked before and could here as well. And I would not be surprised if she didn’t find a great deal of support from the magazine’s publishers, if not from the adult industry as well.
cross-posted at Wet Girlz Blog
