Here’s some bad news for people who shop at Walmart and love reading Cosmopolitan as they check out: According to a report by The Cut, Walmart stores are no longer going to feature the magazine in its checkout lines, thanks to a campaign that has been targeting the magazine because of its sex-related content.
The non-profit organization leading the campaign against the magazine, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), released a statement following Walmart’s decision. “This is what real change looks like in our #MeToo culture,” it read. “NCOSE is proud to work with a major corporation like Walmart to combat sexually exploitative influences in our society.”
Setting aside the fact that this move almost entirely misses the point of the #MeToo movement, the statement went on to explain why it targeted Cosmo, citing the explicitly sexual nature of the publication. “Further, Cosmo targets young girls by placing former Disney stars on its covers, despite the enclosed sexually erotic articles which describe risky sexual acts like public, intoxicated, or anal sex in detail,” it continues. “Customers should not be forced to be exposed to this content when they are trying to check out at the store.”
Per The Cut, the organization was founded in the early 1960s by a group of clergy members calling themselves “Morality in Media.” The org changed its name in 2015, but its self-described purpose stands as “the leading national organization exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation such as child sexual abuse, prostitution, sex trafficking, and the public health crisis of pornography.” The socially conservative group has also aggressively targeted porn, which you can read more about in this Jezebel piece.
One of the main objects of Cosmo, after it was helmed by Helen Gurley Brown in 1965, was to dispel the myths and taboos clouding conversations about sex. Some view Cosmo as playing a vital part in the sexual revolution of the late ‘60s, and today many would argue it still upholds the goal of combating stigmas surrounding sex.
Ironically, Cosmo is owned by Hearst, and Victoria Hearst is one of the NCOSE’s biggest supporters. In 2015, she told the New York Post “God told me to work to get Cosmo out of the hands of children, so that’s what I am doing.”
