Citizen urges stores to remove sexy magazines from check-out lines

Citizen urges stores to remove sexy magazines from check-out lines

August 28, 2001

MAGAZINES SUCH as these have prompted a local resident to complain to grocery stores.

By Aspen C. Emmett
Journal Staff Writer

Standing in line at the grocery check-out stand may be boring for many people, but for others, it can be too exciting.

That’s the contention of a local resident who wants some changes in the magazine line-up in the check-out lines.

Now showing at this week’s grocery store: Movie star Kate Hudson sports her birthday suit on the cover of In Style magazine. Cosmopolitan’s lead story is "Lust Lessons: 10 Crazy/Sexy Bedroom Tricks to Try Tonight," and Glamour boasts that it knows "What Turns Good Sex Into Great Sex."

The prominently displayed magazines are unavoidable, says 20-year-old Mike Malcolm of Cortez, and are inappropriate, sinful lures for children and young men.

Prompted by the numerous visions of scantily clad women, Malcolm has made it his personal mission to put the heat on City Market, Safeway and Wal-Mart to relocate the seductive magazines.

"At this point, I just felt as I was going through the stands, God told me — I felt it in my heart — that I needed to take a stand for it and not accept some of the things in the community," he said.

Recently, Malcolm approached store managers and asked them to either move the magazines or put a cover over them. He also sent out a letter to area churches asking for help in his crusade.

"I personally do not enjoy having to walk by these half-pornographic pictures when I just go to buy a loaf of bread," he wrote in a letter to local pastors. "What I am asking is that you bring this up before your congregation and ask them to put heat on these three stores to cover up the smut in their check-out stands."

All three stores said they would take Malcolm’s complaint to corporate management, but according to local managers, the mighty advertising dollar will likely have the last say.

Donovan Snyder, assistant manager at the Cortez City Market, said that if it was up to him, the magazines would be moved, but it was a corporate decision. The stores can, however, put up covers to hide the magazine just as City Market did with this week’s issue of In Style.

Local Safeway manager Tom Land also cited advertising rights as a dictating factor and added that the debate was nothing new, nor was it limited to Cortez.

Malcolm said the magazines create too much of a temptation for men and send out the wrong message to young women about "how to dress and conduct themselves."

"The covers are not good for people my age who are trying to stay pure," Malcolm told the Journal. "I know myself, as I walk through there I’m tempted to look at the thing and I have to mentally decide, ‘No, I’m not going to look at the thing.’"

If the magazines were not there at all, then it would alleviate the intense temptations, he said.

"The way they wear their clothes is way too revealing. It causes a man’s mind to focus on sex and not on what he should focus on."

Malcolm said sexually explicit material is much like any other addictive habit.

"A kid that’s never had soda pop all his life doesn’t know what he’s missing. If I don’t experience a woman that’s unclothed, then I don’t desire it as strongly.

"It’s something that grows on a person. You allow yourself to look at it once and it’s a little sin; then you allow yourself to look at it, a little more sin; and you get a little more interested and then it leads to lighter forms of pornography and then it leads to heavier forms of pornography."

Seeing such images is also detrimental to women because it encourages inappropriate dress and behavior, Malcolm stated.

"If she feels like she can get love by dressing skimpy, she’s going to catch his attention, but it’s not because he wants to love her; it’s because he wants a good time some night," Malcolm explained. "And once he’s got that, he’s going to move on and sheleft with nothing. That’s just not right."

The magazines, however, are not an excuse for deviant behavior, Malcolm cautioned.

"I definitely think people need to take responsibility for their own actions. A person needs to take responsibility for whether they’re going to look at that magazine or go on. But if the magazine was not there, he would not have to make that choice — it would be easier for him."

Malcolm said he is not out to ban magazines, but rather to encourage stores to relocate them so consumers have a choice about viewing them.

"I’m not really out to make a campaign against magazines... if someone makes a point to go to the magazine aisle, that’s a choice they make. If I just go to buy a loaf of bread, I don’t want to be bombarded with this stuff."