Anti-Cosmo mission: ADA and others

By: American Decency Staff

As you may know, American Decency has made it part of our mission to oppose sexually graphic magazines at checkout counters. We have expended much effort over the years to encourage supermarkets, grocery stores, and other family shopping centers to remove Cosmopolitan magazine from the checkouts (or to the very least cover it with blinders). It’s hard not to be aware of the sexually graphic headlines of Cosmo – they stare us in the face every week as we wait in line at the checkout. Those efforts have garnered some success, but far less than we’d like.   We have also encouraged you to speak out where you shop, and we continue to urge you to do so!

 
But we are not alone in this fight. In recent months two others have also taken up this concern.   On the surface these two new allies may seem like surprising opponents to the pornographic magazine, Cosmopolitan – one is a 26 year old former model and the other is the granddaughter and an heir of William Randolph Heart who founded the Hearst Corporation, the publisher of Cosmopolitan magazine.
 
Last year former model Nicole Weider embarked on a campaign to put Hearst Corporation’s sexually explicit Cosmopolitan magazine in a wrapper and ensure that it is sold only to those over the age of 18.
 
Anti-Cosmo Mission“About 12 years ago, before the Lord told me to found Praise Him Ministries in 2001, I noticed how pornographic the content of Cosmopolitan magazine was. I telephoned Frank Bennack, head of the company, and told him Cosmopolitan should not be sold to minors and that I would like to address the board about it,” she told FOX411’s Pop Tarts column. “He refused to allow it, and refused to admit that Cosmo is pornography. Sex sells and the company does not care that Cosmo gets into the hands of children. Since Frank blocked my access, I decided to bypass him and send my petition directly to each board member via Federal Express… I never received a response from the company. But I had delivered the message God wanted. I went on with life and never looked at Cosmo again.”
 
“It’s important to understand that we are not trying to censor Cosmopolitan magazine or stop the Hearst Corporation from printing it,” she stressed. “We are simply asking Hearst to take responsibility for the magazine’s pornographic content and voluntary bag it and make sure that it is sold to adults only. Right now, Hearst is refusing to do that, so Nicole and I have been speaking to legislators and others in authority to have Cosmo fall under the guidelines of states’ ‘Material Harmful To Minors’ laws. That would make it illegal to sell the magazine to minors.”…
 
And those are just the cover stories.
 
The ‘Material Harmful to Minors’ law is defined as “any communication, picture, image, graphic image file, article, recording, writing, or other matter of any kind that is obscene” or that the average person would consider to a pander to a prurient interest; depicts, describes, or represents, in a manner patently offensive with respect to minors, and taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.” The obscenity laws as they pertain to minors vary by state. 
 
“The most obvious example of this would be their choice of design elements and cover models. The design elements include classic strategic to appeal to young readers, such as extra large fonts and minimum words on a page, the use of over-the-top grammatical devices such as exclamation points all over the place, the use of extremely bright colors and slang which is used by young people not adults,” she pointed out. “In the recent past their cover models have included underage (then 17-year-old) Dakota Fanning, Disney star Selena Gomez (who has a clothing line for teens and tweens) as well as teen-crazes Ashley Greene and Demi Lovato.” …
Take a look at those around you next time you’re stuck in line at a checkout lane. Look at the vulnerable young women who struggle with self-image after being bombarded by the lies put forth by Cosmo which tells them their worth is dependent upon their sex appeal.   Notice the children who have Cosmo’s explicit headlines and cleavage-baring photos foisted upon them at their own eye level. And think about the men who can easily be impacted by such sexually-charged material, even Christian men who can be lured into a lifestyle of lust. 
 
One small form of protest is to turn the magazine over. While this may temporarily hide the sleazy cover, we know it’s only a momentary fix until someone flips it back around. 
 
And be persistent. If Cosmo is still there next week repeat the process and urge your friends and family members to join you. I can almost guarantee you, it won’t be easy. Your knees may shake and your palms may sweat. Your heart will race and your face may feel flush. Confrontation is never easy.   
 
And let us know of your accounts. You will be an encouragement to us as well as to others. We can make a difference if we don’t turn the other way when the sleaze of Cosmopolitan stares us in the face.
 
 
http://www.anticosmomission.com/
 
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