I'm boycotting WH Smith............

[Itsthawooluff]

following the piece on Woman's Hour on Radio 4, until they get rid of the Playboy range of children's / teenagers stationery.

I'm not anti porn per se, but I am tired of every female between the ages of 5 and 55 being expected to look like,dress like and act like a 16 year old nymphette who is permanently "up for it".

And I reckon Heffner has made enough money from the world's w~~k~~s without having to put his sleazy brand to pencil cases ffs.

just dont buy them

but kama... would you feel happy with your 5 yr old having it?

your 5 year olds not gonna have it unless you go in there and buy it for them

Hear hear!
Didn't hear Woman's Hour but I will see if I can listen online.

but the point is that it's all being marketed AT children

hmmm lemme see... pencil cases, folders, general school stuff... in lovely colours... in a shop where school kids buy their things

its the sort of stuff my childless little sister of 24 would buy for work

Because it's on pencil cases, rucksacks, schoolwork folders etc.

How many young men in their 20s do you know that need a pink pencil case with a playboy bunny on it?

Are they still selling this stuff? There was general outrage when it first came on the shelves but I thought they were discontinuing it. FGS, it's clearly wrong to sell Playboy merchandising to schoolchildren. Appalling.

Have a look in WHSmith - this stuff is on the shelves with the kid's school stuff. They are clearly not marketing it at adults.

Exceprt from Guardian article a few months ago.

So WHSmith has just jumped on the Playboy bandwagon. The difference is that, unlike other retailers, it is clearly marketing its products to children, not adults. Its Playboy stationery range which, in my local branch in Wood Green, London, shares a stand with Bratz and Funky Friends, includes pink and glittery pencil cases, pink ring-binders, mini pads, diaries, zip files, gel pens and eraser sets. I know a five-year-old who'd just love the set of cute bunny rubbers in a row. Pencil cases are largely used by schoolchildren. Pink and glittery is largely favoured by girls from 0-16 years. By placing the bunny logo on school equipment, underage children are seduced into buying into the pornographic brand - an adult, top-shelf brand that sells women as sexual commodities. But WHSmith denies that Playboy means porn.

"Playboy is probably one of the most popular ranges we've ever sold," says head of media relations for WHSmith, Louise Evans. "It outsells all the other big brands in stationery, like Withit [a range of cute cartoon animals], by a staggering amount. That should give you an idea of how popular the brand is. We offer customers choice. We're not here to act as a moral censor."

The pressure group Object, which is also campaigning against WHSmith's promotion of the Playboy brand to children, says: "Playboy's logo clearly represents pornography. The magazine routinely features sexualised and full-frontal images of naked young women. It also promotes pornographic videos and strip shows. Playboy is about men buying women and presents this as natural and normal male behaviour, together with fast cars, football and male role models (not shown naked). WHSmith is therefore endorsing pornography to young, impressionable and possibly underage girls."

Kirwan says the teenage girls in her school "are aware of what the Playboy icon is" and "were saying that, even though the pencil cases feature no blatant pornographic images, the bunny symbol represents pornographic images. The girls are able to acknowledge that symbols have a deeper significance than that which is on the surface. For stockists and manufacturers to deny this is shockingly disingenuous."

But for WHSmith it's a style choice. "We believe it is a fashion range," says Evans. "There's no inappropriate imagery. It's just the bunny. It's a bit of fun, popular and fashionable."

I loathe this stuff - there's a general proliferation of it. I saw a pencil case in there (not part of the playboy range) with some kind of derogatory comment about boys - just very unpleasant.

yuk

Think my younger children just view playboy motif as a friend of Miffy. To them they are just cute bunnies and I don't feel inclined to enlighten them just now.

but by buying it you're giving money to an industry that exploits women and puts porn on the shelves

OK, just listened to the Womans Hour feature.
What surprised me most was how the discussion centred on what the girls themselves thought about the stuff - they spent ages arguing about whether or not little girls knew about the porn associations. Surely the point is that the grown ups do know and it is going to lead to wider society associating little girls and sexuality - I mean, my 10 month old dd obviously would have no idea what a crack whore was but I wouldn't have thought putting her in a t-shirt with that as a slogan was a very good idea.

The argument below that it is not aimed at children because adult women buy it too - I am not convinced by that, because increasingly there is an overlap between little girl and young woman style (pink glittery stuff and dodgy tshirt slogans for both) and surely it's that very overlap which, in certain elements, is worrying.