Walmart Is Pulling Cosmo Magazine From All Their Checkout Aisles Because Of The #MeToo Movement
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Business Insider – Walmart is pulling Cosmopolitan — a magazine for women that’s primarily staffed by women — from its checkout lines, apparently in response to the #MeToo movement against sexual violence.
On Tuesday, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, an anti-pornography organization, said Walmart had responded to its campaign to pull Cosmopolitan from the shelves in checkout aisles. The change will affect the roughly 5,000 Walmart locations where Cosmopolitan is stocked.
“That’s over 5,000 stores where families and individuals will no longer be automatically exposed to Cosmo’s hypersexualized and degrading article titles that regularly promote pornography, sexting, BDSM, group sex, anal sex, and more, all while marketing toward young teens with Disney star cover models,” the center said in a statement.
“As with all products in our store, we continue to evaluate our assortment and make changes,” Walmart said in a statement, noting that the publication will still be on magazine racks.
Let’s fucking goooooooo. It’s about time with this shit. FINALLY I can buy my 35 cent deodorant and 55 cent toothpaste without seeing What Your Va-jay-jay is Dying To Tell You and “Um, Vagina, Are You Okay Down There?”: Easy Fixes For Freaky Issues and When Your Vagina Acts Weird After Sex and 37 Hot Oral Sex Tips To Make You Cum Out Of Your Earholes. (3 of those are real and 1 of them is not but could absolutely be if I did some digging.) I mean I’ll never forget the trauma I experienced the day I was buying a pack of gum from the store during my formative years and came eye to eye with Foreplay Men Crave: Touch His Secret Erotic Spot (Surprise: It Doesn’t Rhyme With Shmenis). Yeah, we’re talkin butt stuff folks. Went into my first sexual experience anxiously waiting for a loose digit to sneak into my asshole and catch me by surprise. The nervous anticipation definitely affected my performance. And I hadn’t even seen 99 Sexy Ways to Touch Him: These Fresh, Frisky Tips Will Thrill Every Inch of Your Guy (Our Favorite Requires a Glazed Donut) yet.
Anyway, Wal Mart says it’s a “business decision,” but this was a direct response to continuous pressure from the NCOSE. That stands for National Center on Sexual Exploitation, which is a clever name change: up until 2015 they were called “Morality in Media” and they work tirelessly around the clock to make sure you are never exposed to pictures of beautiful women posing in anything less than a full burka. I don’t know if they’ve ever had anything to say about us and frankly I don’t give a fuck, but to be clear, these are the people that want to publicly execute anyone who clicks on Smokeshow of the Day.
The NCOSE, which changed its name from Morality in Media in 2015, has been working to cover or remove Cosmo from store shelves for years, deeming it porn. In 2015, the group was behind a successful push to place the magazine behind blinders in stores owned by Rite Aid and Delhaize America (which owns Hannaford Stores and Food Lion).
The Walton family, heirs to Walmart founder Sam Walton, have traditionally donated more to Republicans, and have had a conservative reputation, though the company dropped out of conservative advocacy group American Legislative Council in 2012.
Walmart’s decision comes amid the Me Too movement and a national reckoning on sexual harassment, according to Halverson.
“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,” Halverson said.
The #MeToo justification is hilariously tone deaf and transparent. Co-opting a real women’s movement to explain away and get good PR for your anti-sexy pictures agenda? Saying Cosmo magazine contributes to a culture of women being harassed and abused? What about the experts that say “increasing communication about sex — including sexual pleasure — is a crucial aspect of breaking down the pervasiveness of sexual assault and harassment.” Or the fact reducing Cosmo to a sex-obsessed magazine “is a tired effort to deemphasize the work of other women and pigeonhole women’s media.”
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Not to mention Cosmo is what, 99% staffed by women? That’s just a guess. Hurting the bottom line of a women’s publication made by women for women – #MeToo!
I don’t care about the mom and pop stores Wal Mart drives out of business and how they create unsustainable economic models for surrounding communities. Welcome to capitalism. Foreign labor, lack of benefits, mistreatment of pregnant female workers, wage theft, blah blah blah blah blah. Not my problem. All I care about is the empire of smut and smokeshows and beautiful women and sex that we’ve built an empire on. You come after that with your prude censorship and you are now my enemy.
[H/t Business Insider, USA Today]