‘Cos’ & Effect
Hiding women’s mags isn’t a win for #MeToo
LAST week, Walmart announced that it would be removing Cosmopolitan from its checkout lines after years of pressure from an anti-porn group (it will still sell the mag elsewhere in the store). But in cheering the move as a blow for women in the age of #MeToo, instead of reasonably applauding its removal from children’s view, advocates missed the point and risk diluting the very important focus on sexual assault.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation, formerly Morality in Media, has been campaigning against Cosmo for years, saying it “further desensitiz[es] young women and girls to accept and participate in the pornified and sexually violent culture around them.”
In a statement after Walmart’s decision, the group’s Executive Director Dawn Hawkins said, “this is what real change looks like in our #MeToo culture.” She added that the mag “places women’s value primarily on their ability to sexually satisfy a man and therefore plays into the same culture where men view and treat women as inanimate sex objects.”
Cosmo is, at least in large part, a sex guide. A modern-day kama sutra specifically for women. It’s known for its saucy, often laughably unrealistic sex tips aimed at women who like to get creative with household items and don’t necessarily mind repurposing a spatula.
You can love it; you can hate it (I don’t particularly like it); you can laugh at the gaudy headlines and the variety of synonyms for getting it on, but ultimately, it’s dishonest to pretend the magazine is convincing women they’re pleasure machines for men.
This is especially true more recently — over the past year, men were rarely mentioned in headlines. Articles on male pleasure are less prominent, though still featured. Yet they are far outnumbered by those focused on women — their careers, bodies, emotions, sexual experiences. The magazine is by women, for women. It’s boasted all-female editors since Helen Gurley Brown in 1965 (who was an early, albeit imperfect, champion of fe- male sexuality).
Joanna Coles, who was editor-in-chief from 2012-2016, called the magazine “deeply feminist,” and began pushing it to cover more female-centric issues. In 2014, Coles told NPR, “I think that women’s lives are multilayered. I have no problem understanding that women are interested in mascara and the Middle East.”
Ultimately, Cosmo is selling adventurous, weird, sometimes ridiculous but always consensual sex. If anything, Cosmopolitan educating women on sexual issues might combat a culture where they feel ashamed by sex and unlikely to speak up about abuse.
So why is NCOSE pretending that getting Cosmo moved out of the checkout lines is a win for a movement against sexual abuse and violence? There’s a good reason to pull it from checkout lines: Shielding kids from explicit material and parents from awkward questions. But it has nothing to do with #MeToo.
A post on NCOSE’s Web site said, “Research likewise shows that when someone is being objectified the objectifier is viewing them as if they do not possess a real, individual mind and as if they are less deserving of moral treatment.”
But where does fault lie if a woman is objectified: with the woman or the objectifier? If a man decides that a woman is less deserving of moral treatment because she’s wearing a miniskirt, that’s a flaw to be remedied in the man; it’s not on Cosmo’s conscience — yet for years NCOSE’s crusade was against this magazine first and foremost.
You can argue that Cosmo still has a long way to go in terms of feminist hot takes, but it’s made a lot of strides. It started positively talking about female sexuality before it was considered polite to do so; it has made efforts to educate women on birth control and negotiating equal pay.
Despite NCOSE’s assertions that Cosmopolitan is selling “violent” and “degrading” sex, it’s only degrading if you think female sexuality is shameful. In fact, Cosmo emphasizes sex that’s enjoyable for both partners, but, more often than not, it seems to encourage women to pursue their own pleasure above all else.
So let’s call this what it was: An effort to keep adult content out of the minds of babes and the eyelines of people who’d rather not see “10 tips for a tighter bod” while buying eggs. Although it might be an improvement for vexed Walmart shoppers, it’s not a win for #MeToo.