Supermarkets Tesco and Waitrose to hide 'sexualised' tabloid newspapers front covers after No More Page 3 campaign
| Posted: November 23, 2014
Cheltenham Ladies FC
Campaigners against tabloid newspapers’ Page Three women are celebrating a landmark victory this morning.
Supermarket Tesco announced last night it would no longer show the front cover of tabloids which insist on using the pictures of the women.
And Waitrose followed suit soon after, saying it had been “working on it for some time” and would be changing their newspaper fixtures to display covers out of children’s eyelines.
@gritts1 Thanks for your tweet, we’ve been working on this for some time and we’ll soon be changing our newspaper fixtures.. [1/2]
— Waitrose (@waitrose) November 21, 2014
@gritts1 ..so we can display some newspaper covers out of the eye line of children. Thanks.
— Waitrose (@waitrose) November 21, 2014
Campaign groups, including No More Page 3, Child Eyes, and Cheltenham Town Ladies FC, have spent months trying to get stores to do so.
Tesco will change the format of its news cube shelves, so that customers will only be able to see the names and logos of tabloids, and only make them visible from the sides.
No More Page 3, a group set up by writer and author Lucy Anne-Holmes, sent out a statement yesterday applauding the decision.
It wrote: “As you’ve no doubt seen, we’re absolutely thrilled that after months of lobbying, Tesco have announced that they are going to change the way they display their newspapers in direct response to concerns raised by supporters ofChild Eyesand No More Page 3.
“As the covers of these newspapers frequently contain sexualised pictures of young women wearing – well, not an awful lot, really – many of our supporters, especially those who are parents of young children, are understandably unhappy about being confronted with ‘sexy pics’ every time they pop into the supermarket for a pint of milk.
“Of course for us as a campaign, it’s not just about protecting children from sexualised imagery; many adults don’t want to be confronted with inappropriate pictures whilst doing their weekly shop either! It doesn’t create a comfortable, safe environment for women when they are faced at every turn with reminders of just how much value is placed on their appearance, sexual availability, and very little else.
“Customers will have to walk right up to the display in order to see what’s on the front of the newspapers, and so anyone not wishing to buy one won’t immediately be confronted with whatever graces the cover that day.”
Tesco’s customer experience and insight director Tracey Clements said: “As a parent myself, I recognise that newspaper front pages can sometimes have images that are inappropriate for young children.
"At Tesco, we take our responsibilities as a family friendly retailer very seriously and it’s important that we do everything we can to promote the right environment in store.
"We’ve listened to Claire and the Child Eyes campaigners, and we’ve also asked our customers what they think about this issue. The change we’re making to our display panels in our Superstore and Extra formats will strike the right balance for everyone.
"For our millions of customers, choosing a newspaper will still be simple and easy, but at the same time, any inappropriate front pages will now be of out of the immediate eyesight of young children and toddlers.
"I’m really grateful to Claire and everyone who has campaigned on this issue for raising their concerns and for engaging with us.”
3 comments
verysceptical - ah yes, the DM's apparent campaign to ban such images. Except of course they can't get articles onto their website quick enough with masses of pictures of young female "celebs" wearing next-to-nothing. That Karkrashian woman for example, or Miley Cyrus, or Rihanna. Seems the norm now is to wear is little as possible (whilst just about avoiding an arrest for public indecency), with agents having tipped the paps off on where their near-naked clients will be. Said paps then flog their images to the press (particularly the DM), who then toss a coin to decide if they're pixelating certain exposed body parts today, or not. If such images were banned from publication, the DM's website would have very little content on it...
Hopefully this will extend to rags like the Daily Mail.
Meanwhile, school kids are swapping porn on their phones and tablets. The word 'hypocrisy' surrounds all this latest Political Correctness fad. "Tesco announced last night it would no longer show the front cover of tabloids which insist on using the pictures of the women." What's it going to display then - page 3? I don't think any newspapers have semi naked people on their front covers. They do show pictures of people being killed/bombed etc. Then there's the TV news, where they can see all the violence they're likely to want. I despair of this country.