Nudity in Non-Restricted Magazines

Factual Questions
1

I picked up the June 2003 Esquire magazine in the break room at work today because the lovely Carrie-Anne Moss was on the cover. After reading through a pretty good article about her I flipped though the pages and landed on a series of photos about swimwear. Nothing unusal, except for the fact that for the first two pictures of the series there was a topless female model.

That got my wondering: how come certain magazines are restricted and others aren’t? Why can’t a fifteen year old buy a Playboy, but can buy a Esquire? Is there a government committee that rates these things?

2

Local standards, local laws. There are no national standards, except that those under 18 have no particular rights in the matter.

It’s quite possible that the Esquire issue you bought violated some local standard, but as long as no one complains, and there’s no nudity on the cover, there’s nothing’s likely to happen.

There’s nothing East Podunk can do to the publishers of Esquire, BTW; local laws are normally enforced against retailers.

3

I used to look at National Geographic as a kid, bought it too, there are lots of nude women in it :slight_smile: I guess it depends on intent.

4

If you’re a kid and desperately want to look at pictures of topless or even nude women, forget the mens’ magazines and head for the rack with the womens’ fashion magazines. The higher the fashion, the greater the nudity.

5

Certainly style and fashion magazines get away with a lot more. When high fashion magazines have carefully styled photoshoots by famous photographers, I suppose there is some kind of justification that the work is more or less art. After all, nobody’s going to stop a child buying an edition of Great Painters magazine that features a Botticelli nude, are they?

6

Isnt it the bottom half which is restricted? You can get topless pictures in newspapers sometimes, but you never see the between the legs bits do you?

7

Like Nametag said, it’s a question of local laws and what you want to do about “smut.”

If you haven’t noticed, publishers of adult magazines have become ever bolder as of late. Spurred by declining sales in the face of the expanding Internet, magazines that once merely showed skin moved on to “simulated sex acts,” and from there to downright hardcore pornography.

Why? Because they can get away with it. It sells, and they have their established customers who will buy it. That, and with all the other things to worry about out there (Beltway Snipers, al Qaida terrorists, the economy…), the authorities really have bigger fish to fry.

I’m not saying that you’ll find these on the rack at your local 7-Eleven (more on that later) - quite to the contrary, you might have to visit an adult bookstore to pick them up - I’m saying that the “boundaries of decency” have been pushed back in favour of money, and most of us feel OK with that.

This also goes a long way towards explaining the presence of naked women in glamour magazines. It’s not supposed to be overtly sexual, hence the authorities are likely to give it a gloss over and not care.

You may have also noticed the preponderence of magazines like Stuff, FHM, and Maxim, all of which have cloned each other on the racks at your neighbourhood convenience store in the last two weeks. This, I believe, is the natural evolution of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Men can buy “sexy” without buying “pornography,” and their wives/girlfriends are OK with it.

Thing is, the Larry Flynts and Hugh Hefners of the world are finding out that “sexy” sells without “sex;” you can sell as many or more copies of Maxim with Kim Cattrall or Jessica Alba on the cover (yet not naked inside) than you can of Double-D Nurses in Bondage.

8

Thanks guys!

-Wolfian, lifetime subscriber to DDNB