Zoo and Nuts can boycott the Co-op all they like – falling sales, not angry feminists, will soon spell the end of them
Today's news that Zoo and Nuts have thrown their sex toys out of the pram and are to boycott the Co-op following its announcement that it will be introducing modesty bags for lads' mags has me a little stymied. For reasons that have already been outlined on this website, the term "modesty bag" has left many an observer of this Lose the Lads' Mags ruckus feeling somewhat uncomfortable. I object to the objectification of female flesh, not the existence of it. Several of the lads' mags have agreed to tone down their covers to feature girls in lingerie or bikinis, which, frankly, now puts them on a par with many a women's mag. Heat's recent cover of Kim Kardashian ("KIM'S BIG FAT GREEK HOLIDAY") or Closer's "LOVESTRUCK BODIES" ("I love having junk in my trunk") basically inhabit the same strange moral universe as Nuts and Zoo, that is, a binary world of "girl" and "non-girl".
"Zoo have addressed the cover by toning down the look … there are non-salacious coverlines and more non-girl editorial," grunted a spokesperson for Bauer media. Never did I think that I would live in a world where say, a car or a fart joke would be categorised not by their existences in reality, but by their failure to look good in French knickers. Ho hum.
And yet the boys' retreat does seem, in light of falling circulation rates, a tad counterproductive. In the second half of last year, Nuts sold 80,186 (down nearly 30% on the previous year), while Zoo managed only 40,068 (down 19.3%). Of course, this is happening across the magazine industry – just as men's magazines are failing to keep up with the tide of naked, gyrating flesh that the internet has to offer, so are trashy women's magazines failing to compete with the Mail's Sidebar of Shame. Punters are voting with their feet, opting for content the purchase of which doesn't involve studiously not looking a cashier in the eye, and I doubt any of these publications will exist in a decade, tops.
That's not to say that the Lose the Lads' Mags campaign isn't worthwhile – anything that can hasten the demise of Nuts and Zoo is OK by me, and it's important that as a society, we acknowledge that women are more than the sum of their private parts. But the market is a harsher critic than even the most vocal of angry feminists, and it's in the process of not so much taking its "hands off our Nuts" than it is of washing its hands of them altogether.
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