Walmart Pulls Cosmopolitan Magazine From Checkout Lanes

Cosmopolitan, whose covers feature pouty models who often show a lot of cleavage, will no longer be available in the checkout lanes of 5,000 Walmart stores nationwide, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, which helped bring about the change, said in a video announcement Tuesday.

"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, the organization’s vice president of advocacy and outreach said in a Facebook Live video. “Instead, all of these magazines will be moved, in isolation, to the magazine racks so that you have to intentionally seek them out.”

Cosmo’s “hypersexualized” cover images, which appear at children’s eye level in checkout lanes, and “degrading, 'pornified' written content” are out of step with the #MeToo movement, Halverson said. Her organization says the images and editorial content teach women, men, boys and girls that a woman’s value ultimately lies in her sexuality and sexual abilities.

The NCOSE has been complaining about Cosmo for years, naming it one of the contenders for its “2018 Dirty Dozen List” of publications, social media sites and applications, and other entities it says contribute to sexual exploitation. The 2018 list includes Amazon, backpage.com, Comcast, Ebsco, HBO, iBooks, Poster Boys, Roku, Snapchat, Steam, Twitter and YouTube.

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Joining Cosmopolitan as a “contender” were the global communications company Verizon and the Department of Justice. For eight years, the NCOSE said, the DOJ has “refused to enforce existing federal obscenity laws (hardcore pornography) despite the fact that these laws have been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court and previously enforced.”

You can watch the video announcement here.

Photo via Shutterstock