No doubt by now you’ve heard about the lads magazines debate; the idea behind it is that magazines that have any kind of sexualised front page should be covered to prevent kids being exposed to such images.
It helps to avoid that awkward ‘Mum why is that woman wearing her underwear to ride a motorbike?’ questions from little Andrew on his post-school trip to the shop.
I’ve recently been thinking about where I stand on the whole thing. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the aggressive, shouty, we-want-justice side of things but in this instance I tried to pick it apart bit by bit. Now, I understand where they’re coming from. Your kid glances up at FHM and tilts their head sideways at the sight of some woman’s cleavage before you can yank them away.
OUT OF SIGHT
Parents don’t want their children to see things like that because they think it’s going to damage them in some way – that’s the bottom line. Parents of boys don’t want their little champs gazing at a woman’s chest and their little princesses thinking that the front cover of a lads magazine is the only place for a girl.
Personally, I think as long as shops ensure they’re out of eyeshot then I really don’t see the problem. We can’t begin censoring everything that exposes the human body or sexualises it or we’ll end up with everything having a grey cover on it.
What I don’t understand is why everyone is kicking up a fuss about an A4 image of a woman in her bikini or lingerie when children are exposed to so much more in day to day life. Firstly, kids are going to see women in bikinis on the beach, maybe even topless women and secondly, why is no-one paying attention to the house sized image of the woman in the Ann Summers window in her lacy lingerie seductively licking a cherry?
EVERYTHING COVERED
Children can’t be protected from everything. Yes we can take precautionary measures and make sure they’re put in place – such as ensuring that the magazines that present some kind of exposed flesh are actually not in children’s vision but if we start covering things up to protect children then it’ll go from sexualisation to violence and before you know it everything’s covered.
The way I see it is this: anyone with a birthday before 1995 has been exposed to all this kind of stuff, and we turned out okay. (Please note: The Jeremy Kyle show probably isn’t a prime example of my previous statement).