Monday, February 28, 2000
Sex sells . . . but at the checkout line?
Magazine buyers, industry sources debate issue stirred by grocery chain covering up 'Cosmopolitan'
BY RICHELLE THOMPSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The cliche is true: Sex sells.
Locked in a fierce circulation battle, mainstream women's magazines are hiking up their skirts in a multi-million dollar gamble to win readers.
Explicit cover photos. Sizzling headlines. Unavoidable sex education.
It's too early to tell how the come-on is working. But anyone who has stopped by an airport newsstand or scanned the titles at the grocery store checkout has already seen the skin. Taking a 6-year-old young reader along can turn into an R-rated trip.
Consider “10 Dates Before Sex?!” in the latest Mademoiselle or “Sex: 3 Days, 30 Ways” in Woman's Own. February's Redbook offered answers to “Your 39 most embarrassing sex questions,” while the March edition promises “Intimate secrets of women men love.”
The Kroger Co., the nation's largest grocery store chain, covered up Cosmopolitan this month, the equivalent of demanding that a preteen daughter wear a longer skirt and wipe off the makeup. The cover-up has drawn attention to other women's magazines. Turns out even the journals your mother brought home now offer titillating tips on improving your sex life.
“Don't make me have to be exposed to it,” said Demetrius Taylor, a 43-year-old father of three from Loveland who supports Kroger's decision. “As long as they feel they need to put sexual messages on the cover to sell the magazine, then I think it's fair (to use the blinders).”
Thousands of people across the country applauded Kroger through phone calls, letters and e-mail, company spokesman Gary Rhodes said.
But not everyone agreed. At the Bellevue, Ky., Kroger, customers Ali Girard and Liz Solway said Cosmo should be uncovered.
“I don't think it should be censored,” said Mrs. Solway of Mount Adams. “I can't imagine Cosmo is that bad.”
A Cosmo reader, Ms. Girard, also of Mount Adams, said she's never seen a cover bad enough to have to be covered up.
“I've seen worse on Rolling Stone.”
@:Peep show for kids
@body:
Lewd lines and tawdry taunts don't entice Christina Carr to pick up Cosmo.
As a fashion merchandising major in college, Mrs. Carr admits Cosmo and Vogue were must-reads. Today, at 31 and the mother of three, the Maineville woman relies on Martha Stewart's Living and Victoria magazines for advice.
“It bothers me to see some of those things (on the magazine covers)” she said. “If children are able to read it, I think it's inappropriate.”
After more than a year of review, Kroger executives agreed, issuing the cover-up edict to its 2,200 stores. Final sales figures for February's Cosmo at Kroger stores weren't available, but Cosmopolitan spokeswoman Andrea Kaplan said she didn't expect the blinders to make a dent. Newsstand and checkout counter sales account for about half of the magazine's 2.9 million monthly circulation.
The blinders could even serve to make readers more curious, said Mary McGeachy, vice president of communications at Magazine Publishers of America. The industry association, which represents 1,400 magazines, opposes Kroger's policy.
“A lot of headlines on Cosmo covers are very suggestive and not appropriate for the checkout areas where young children might see them,” Mr. Rhodes said.
"Forbidden fruit'
So what about neighboring magazines that promise sex tips to make you scream?
The blinders will be considered on a case-by-case basis, Mr. Rhodes said. There are no plans to cover any other magazines at this point.
Obscuring one but not others seems hypocritical to Samir Husni, who heads the magazine program at the University of Mississippi and owns the trademark, Mr. Magazine.
“Either be honest and say you don't want me at the checkout counter or let me stay there (without blinders),” Mr. Husni said.
If stores are worried about protecting children, then they should mask gun magazines before sexy ones, he said.
“Which is more dangerous: Looking at a sex magazine or a magazine that tells you how to conceal a gun and use it?”
Critics of Kroger say magazine editors are only giving readers what they want. If people weren't interested in reading about sex, they wouldn't buy the product. Simple supply-and-demand economics.
The number of new sex magazines launched in 1999, 48, dropped more than half from 110 in 1997, said Mr. Husni, who has tracked the market since 1978.
“That doesn't mean people are no longer interested in buying sex magazines,” he said. “The opposite is true. Sex has invaded all the other magazines with a big boom.”
Penthouse went from erotica to pornography, he said, while Cosmo went from romance to erotica.
The magazines are “aiming for the lowest common denominator and the animal in us. If I don't reach your animal instincts, I don't sell you anything.”
Media fill in details
Part of the appeal to frank sex talk is that the topic for so long was shrouded in secrecy, said Carolyn Jenkins, a Xavier University social work professor whose specialty is gender studies.
“We have never talked about sex openly and intelligently, so it's still part of the forbidden fruit concept,” she said. “It's going to take a long time to change those attitudes.”
Reluctance to discuss such issues is evident in controversies over sex education in schools, Ms. Jenkins said. People don't want to be open about sex in the family or at school so they leave it to the media to fill in the details.
For a Maineville mother, the issue isn't lack of access to sexual information but rather an overall decline in morality.
“I think our values are misplaced. Instead of the emphasis being on how nice you are or how bright you are, the emphasis is on how you look,” said Terry Langone, 56. “I think it's a sad state of affairs, but I think you'd have to change the whole culture and everybody's priorities.”
Skin-tillating content
Nothing is taboo any more, said Ben Oumlil, a marketing professor at the University of Dayton.
“There are so many advertisements people are exposed to that magazines ratchet up (the sex content) to get through the fog. They have to get through the clutter and get people's attention.”
Cosmopolitan propelled the sexy covers trend in the 1970s when Helen Gurley Brown invented the Cosmo Girl, an independent woman emboldened with power in the work force and defined by the sexual revolution.
Most months, Cosmo displays in its prime cover position — the upper left-hand corner below the title — sexual innuendo that might make Mae West blush.
February's cover urges readers to try the “"Angel' and 8 Other Sizzling Positions So Hot, You'll Burn a Hole Through the Bed.” Its warning: “Advanced Lovers Only!”
The article describes the moves, some of which gymnasts might find challenging. It provides illustrations, step-by-step directions and rates the difficulty on a scale of 1 to 10.
While Cosmo always had sexier content, other women's magazines seem to be getting edgier.
Redbook, the heretofore mild mannered magazine your mom would bring home, gives no-holds-barred answers to the deepest, darkest sex questions.
To supplement the education, Complete Woman provides “Secrets to Toe-Clenching, Bed-Rocking Climaxes With or Without Him.”
And even More, a Ladies' Home Journal magazine,coyly teases but doesn't put out with its cover line, “The Alpha Woman: She likes to be on top.” Despite the suggestion, the story is not about women in the driver's seat sexually but rather leaders in the work force.
Covers oversexed
Eventually the market will weed out some women's magazines, and the competition for readers will cool to a simmer, said Lynn Varacalli, editor-in-chief of Woman's Own.
Still, even with the race to find the next edgy cover line, there are limits, Ms. Varacalli said. At least right now. Woman's Own wouldn't use four-letter words or the names of sexual organs on the cover. But can Mrs. Varacalli imagine a cover without sexual innuendo? No.
“That's what we do.”
Consumer choice may eventually curtail some sexual content in magazines, suggested Tim Gibson, vice president and creative director at Freedman, Gibson & White, a Cincinnati advertising agency.
The opportunity for marketing may be to swing in the opposite direction, to turn to wholesome instead of buxom for promotions.
People are so inundated with sex from TV, radio, music and the Internet that they could begin to rebel, Mr. Gibson said.
“I don't think advertisers can turn the sexually explicit dial up enough to compete with what people are already exposed to,” he said.
Morality in Media, a national not-for-profit group, started last summer bombarding more than 300 grocery store chains with letters urging them to shield sexy magazines like Cosmo at the checkout counter.
Kroger received the letters, Mr. Rhodes said, but had already been considering a blinder policy.
When cover lines read “Get in there to heat up a man's thigh or That one inch that drives him crazy, you'd have to be a 4-year-old not to get the message,” said Robert Peters, Morality in Media's executive director.
The goal is not to get sex off the cover, Mr. Peters said. Some sex articles are legitimate and explore serious topics.
But most, he said, are gratuitous.
Sex education
The sexy cover lines don't bother 16-year-olds Sally Grote and Christy McCready, both of Landen. Cosmo is a monthly purchase for them.
“You can look into the adult world and see how adults are,” Sally said. “It's fascinating.”
But Cosmo isn't her favorite magazine. At times, it's too adult-oriented with too much emphasis on sex, Sally said.
“Sometimes I have no clue what they're talking about, so I just skip it and go on.”
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