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The front cover of Nuts this week has the coverline 'Grace strips off' followed by 'When breasts escape', but that isn't pornographic, is it?
Labour MP Claire Curtis-Thomas wants to push legislation through Parliament that could banish lads' Zoo, Nuts and FHM to the top shelf in newsagents.

The Periodical Publisher's Association, and the industry's, defence is that these magazines are not top-shelf magazines.

Curtis-Thomas argues some of these magazines, which are currently overseen by a voluntary deal, are degrading to and objectify women.


 
Curtis-Thomas wants a new regulatory body to oversee the sale of sexually explicit magazines, which are not "top shelf". Nuts and Zoo are certainly sexually explicit.

The PPA argues that lads magazines "do not contain pornographic material".

So no problem with this week's Zoo: headlined "World Cup Babes", and subtitled "Kit-Off Special. 15 Pages of End to End Lady Action" or Grace, heaven forbid, getting her kit off as she eeks out her five minutes of post ‘Big Brother’ fame.

So what is pornographic? There is nothing in Zoo, Nuts and FHM apart from a few jokes and endless pages of women with clothes, with a few clothes and without them.

If Nuts and Zoo didn't have semi naked girls on the front cover they would be out of business.

As magazines go, they make a lot of cash, but really they are just extended magazine versions of The Sun's Page 3 and nothing much to be particularly proud of.

One recent issue of Zoo magazine included descriptions of sexual acts in the Dictionary of Porn, which the MP described as being "so graphic and repulsive I am prevented from quoting it on the floor of the House of Commons".

Everyone knows that Nuts and Zoo are read by schoolboys and teenagers. You see them on the bus gathered in groups of two or three. It's possibly no surprise the magazines are sold alongside the Beano and other kids magazines and the publishers know this. Even Viz, the paragon of bad taste, carries a warning to newsagents that it is not for sale to children.

So there is a question as to whether there should be unrestricted access to such magazines by kids.

Maybe a trip to the top shelf or just below it should be forced on publishers. Zoo and Nuts make Playboy look tame by comparison., and it seems to lack end to end action these days. Maybe after a move up the newsagents’ walls, they would produce something less approaching hardcore.

No one is advocating censorship, but Curtis-Thomas is right in talking about safeguards. It isn't censorship.

Surely, there must be a market for a mass market men's magazine that doesn't rely on acres of naked flesh? Seriously there must be, although finding that sellable formula is proving tricky, just look at the fate of Jack.
Published Jun 28 2006, 12:06 PM by Gordon Macmillan
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Gordon Macmillan

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