'A
loaf of bread and a dozen wet, horny babes, please.'
Supermarkets and
local newsagents
I said I would look at
women's representation in local supermarkets and newsagents. I had little idea
how I would tackle either and thought I would simply "see what happened.' As it
turned out, my day became a series of impromptu and random interviews on
attitudes to pornography. The effect of popular magazines in reinforcing
stereotypes has been researched and written about repeatedly for 30 years. The
impact of pornography, in
encouraging, at the very least, demeaning of women and girls, and, at
worse, violence against them, has also been well documented by feminists. What
is more interesting, and depressing, to me, is why, in spite of persistent
campaigning, the stereotypes still exist, and increasingly violent and
explicit material is freely available, in shops where the general public buy
food, clothing, children's books and toys. The question is, what should we do about it?
Sainsbury's
I began with my local,
large Sainsbury's supermarket, focussing on women's magazines, and men's
magazines. There are a large number of 'Women's Lifestyle', which range from Woman
and Home, through to Country
Kitchen, Weight Watchers, Slimming World, and Zest (Get a flat stomach – fast!). They move on to more specialised
subjects, You and Your Wedding, Your Hair, Glamour,
In Style, Good Housekeeping
(the latter presumably comes when you've exhausted your appearance skills).
After this come celebrity magazines, Hello, OK and the like. It goes without saying that the
images of women on the covers are all young, slim, white, and mostly with long
blonde hair.
I then moved around to
the men's section. Sainsbury's now has a policy of putting 'explicit' magazines
behind a grey board, at easy reach level. The covering partially obscures the
photos so you can only see a sliver of bare leg or breast – it gives the
impression of naked women straddling a broad board, which is somehow worse.
Often, the magazines are leafed through and left exposed. Therefore, hiding 'explicit' material becomes a very
token gesture.
Men's magazines are
divided into subjects such as Sports, Motoring, Music. Semi-clad women feature
on the covers of motoring magazines, still posed provocatively on car bonnets
as they were 30 years ago, and on most of the sporting magazines. They are at
adult eye level, or lower. Then there are the lads' magazines, Nuts, Zoo,
loaded, FHM. This month's
loaded advertises on the front
cover 'the nude issue. 80 women 100% naked'. Inside, the content is as promised, including several pages of
graphic images of (supposedly) lesbian sex. These lads' mags are geared to a
teenage market.
I asked two middle-aged men
(separately), what they thought about the lads' mags (I flicked through them,
showing them page after page of semi-naked or naked women with huge, unnatural
breasts in 'fuck me' poses). I
added, 'how would you feel about your sons
reading them?'
Both replied almost identically, with comments such as 'It doesn't
bother me'; 'Don't mind, can't see the harm'; 'Don't have a problem
with it.' When pressed, 'Don't you think it humiliates women?' one said
'No,' and the other said he had
never thought about it. I then asked a middle-aged woman for her
opinion. She
leafed through them, clearly surprised at the content. 'Zoo, that's
very PC,
isn't it,' she said outraged, 'animals in wet t-shirts!' The cover of
this
magazine portrayed, again, a parade of scantily clad women with
surgically
altered breasts. She went on to say they were 'offensive, exploiting
the women,
exploiting the kids who buy them', and added, 'Get them hooked,
cheaply, then
they'll progress onto the more expensive £5+ ones. (Some of the
lads' mags are
priced at £1.40). She added, 'So Sainsbury's is selling 'dirty
magazines for
kids'.
Next, I spoke to a
Sainsbury's employee. He said they covered up the lads' mags because of
complaints from customers, at a national level, but added that the distribution
of magazines was intended to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. 'It's
their choice, isn't it?' (We might question Sainsbury's definition of 'broad
audience'). Their policy is to sell lads' mags to customers aged 16+, but the
age range who buys them in Sainsbury's, he thought, is 25-6. He informed me
that young men do not tend to buy them in supermarkets, as there are too many
restrictions. 'Newsagents are easier as the mags are lower down and there's no
age check. Anyway they have their own web-sites'. At this point he took Nuts off the shelf, and pointed out the web-site,
listed in minute writing next to the date and the price in euros. 'So you can
look at their web-site, you don't have to buy the magazine, and there's much
worse on the internet, anyway,' he concluded, adding hastily, 'not that I look
at porn'.
Local newsagent
Behind the counter,
there was a white woman, aged around 55-60, and a young Asian woman whose
mother owns the shop. They were happy to talk. They said 'old men come in and
buy pornography regularly, they used to browse, but now shop policy is to seal
the magazines up so they can't. If they want to read them, they have to do it
in their own homes.'
The porn magazines
were all there, but packed tightly together on the top shelf, so images of
naked women were not obvious. The lads' mags were at eye level but tucked into
each other, so, again, not seen at a glance. The top shelf magazines were taped
shut. The younger woman pointed out the 'speciality' porn, featuring, for
instance 'different ages. Over 60s, 30+, children'. I asked why the lads' mags
were at eye level, and she said 'the distributor tells you where you have to
put them on the shelves, and lads' mags have to be where they are easy to
reach.' In response to my question, she said 'boys as young as 11 buy them
regularly'.
Suddenly, they nudged
each other and mouthed to me, 'Look, there's one now. One of
the dirty old men. He
comes in all the time.' A man in his 60s was looking at the top shelf, but,
feeling himself observed, seemed unsure what to do. I went and stood beside
him, also looking up at the porn. I then took a magazine down - woman
in very explicit pose, huge breasts dangling, crouched
on all 4's, buttocks thrust into the air – and said innocently,
'What do
you think of this?' He was bemused, and didn't answer. I persisted, 'Do
you
look at porn?' I think he was startled (I can only speculate) because
he said 'Yes'. 'Oh, what do you get out of looking at it?' I asked
earnestly, in
interview mode. 'I prefer reading books,' he mumbled, and hastily left
the
shop.
Finally, I asked about
distribution – why does the owner stock pornography? They thought shops
were obliged to take certain numbers of every magazine, and that if they
refused magazines they don't get free distribution.
Tesco Express
The Duty Manager was a young woman who
informed me that a plan comes from head office and you have to set out the
magazines accordingly. The
pornography isn't hidden. I asked the manager what she thought, and she said 'I
don't mind.' Then she added, 'I don't look at them.'
Two small
general stores, with no other shops around.
Next was a small
general store among lots of houses, selling groceries, and wine as well as
papers. The top shelf was stuffed with pornography, including attached DVD's
advertising 'hard-core porn.' The man behind the counter was unwilling to speak
to me, and unhappy that I removed a magazine to show him. I put it back, and
left.
As I walked into the
last store, the first magazine, at eye level, was Wet, horny babes. (Underneath were teen magazines, tweenie,
daisy, Star Girl). This magazine, easily within reach, was the
most sickeningly explicit one I saw – entire pages were close-ups of
women's vaginas and anus's. I took it up to the two men at the counter, flicked
through the pages, and as before, asked what they thought of these images and
why they were selling them. When another man came into the shop in the middle
of our discussion, the manager got embarrassed and hid the images.
His response/justification for stocking
them was interesting. First, he said 'Christianity
has gone too far. It's
this country we're living in. No morals. If we were in a Muslim country it
wouldn't be allowed.' I pointed out that it was he who was stocking the
pornography, and that I, too, was grossly offended by these images (not that I
was convinced he was). He then changed tack, became apologetic, and said, 'I
have to pay the rent. Look at that bread over there. It goes stale; no-one will
buy it tomorrow, I have to throw it out. This', indicating the revolting
magazine, 'sells really well. I make a good profit on these magazines, so I'm
not going to stop selling them.'
Finally, I asked if
there was an age limit in who he sold them to. He said 18, and that he didn't
ask for proof of age.
Interview with 4
boys
When I returned to my
car, there were four boys having a heated argument outside Tesco Express, one
African Caribbean youth aged 19, and three white boys, aged 12-15. I asked if I
could interrupt to ask them some questions. The conversation went roughly like
this:
Me: Do you read lads'
mags?
Boy (12): You mean Nuts,
Zoo, loaded?
All: Yes
Youth (19): I read
porn, I have a porn magazine in my bedroom at this moment, 'cos I haven't got a
girlfriend, and this stops me going out and raping women.
Me: Whether you're
winding me up or not, why would you want to rape women if you weren't wanking
in your bedroom?
Youth: I couldn't help
myself, man.
Me: Come on. You don't
really think men have an uncontrollable urge, do you?
It's difficult to
remember how the rest of the conversation went. The 15 year old might have
agreed the image of women in the mags was sexist, then the 19 year old said he
was too young yet to know anything. The point was, they were all familiar with
the magazines, and rape was treated as a joke.
Postscript
Today (July5th), I was
shopping in Sainsbury's. loaded was exposed. I think Tuesday must have got to me at some level, because
I felt furious, and called the manager. I said the fact they sold these
magazines sickened me and asked what was wrong with him that he condoned
selling this extremely offensive rubbish. He said the fact that I don't like
them doesn't mean that other people don't have the right to buy them and could
I kindly leave the store.
Recommendations
I suggest that
1) The Fawcett Society
formulates a policy against pornography, on the grounds that
a) pornography demonstrates the
unequal treatment of women, and
b) promotes the unequal treatment
of women, and, additionally,
c) insults and demeans men and
boys by providing such material for their gratification.
2) our local Bristol group initiates a local campaign against pornography, starting with attempting
a ban in supermarkets such as Sainsbury's, Tesco, etc, and tackling the
distribution system to small shops.