Ensuring that shoppers at one of the world’s biggest retail chains will have to work a little bit harder to learn the “HOT SEX SKILLS” to “Get & Give Supreme Pleasure”—or, you know, just read some writing, interviews, and photos from a women-focused perspective—Walmart has announced that it’s removing Cosmopolitan from its checkout lines, after receiving pressure from an anti-pornography group.
According to CNN Money, the magazine will still be available in the company’s stores in the full-fledged periodicals sections, just not in the checkout lanes, next to mountains of gum and those little magazine that recap the comings-and-goings of the week’s big soap operas. Walmart made the change, at least in part, at the behest of the National Center On Sexual Exploitation, a.k.a. Morality In Media, a religiously affiliated anti-pornography group that’s been operating in the U.S. since the 1960s.
The group’s director, Dawn Hawkins, issued a statement this week, saying, “Walmart’s removal of Cosmo from checkout lines is an incremental but significant step toward creating a culture where women and girls are valued as whole persons, rather than as sexual objects.” Cosmo has been frequently criticized for promoting what some see as a worldview that values a woman strictly on her ability to sexually please her partner, although a quick perusal of the magazine’s most recent output—like, say, this analysis from a few years back of prominent male actors who’ve never worked with a female director—suggest a much wider focus than that stereotypical portrayal of its material.