I am in full agreement that it is womens mags that have the most perverted view of sex and sexuality. They also have malnourished chicks that no red blooded male would want to grind bones with.

Whilst Harry’s comment of neither holds some water, there is no doubt in my mind which of the two types of mag are more harmful.

Nice to see that concept get a mention here - at last. It has been lost in this discussion - my main point was about the explotation of kids through marketing and advertising.

Anyway let me throw a radical idea into the mix:

Perhaps *neither* Playboy nor Cosmo need be part of the sexual and social development of young people? Since when did Damian’s ‘Either Or’ position reflect any sort of reality?

Are there not better alternatives we could find? I think we might be able to manage that don’t you? Is the choice for boys looking to understand their sexuality between Hustler and Maxim?

Here is another idea: Perhaps “a mature and open approach to sexuality” need not involve pornography?

Perhaps, dare I say it, pornography doesn’t actually help at all in developing a “a mature and open approach to sexuality” ?

Perhaps pornography, including soft porn such as Playboy, far from being some subversive or empowering challenger of existing backward attitudes to sexuality actually *reflects* those very attitudes?

Perhaps there really is nothing ‘empowering’ about a woman getting her tits out for the lads?

And yes I am an ‘angry Dad’ . But your talk of archetypal puritanical feminists could take us into some very interesting territory.

All very tedious.

The Playboy brand means three things:

1. Beautiful photographed naked women (obvious)
2. A mature and open approach to sexuality, and
3. Some the best writing on a whole range of subject you’ll find anywhere on the news stands.

In the case of both of my own kids (13yr old son & 5 yr old daughter) when they’re old enough I’d rather they both end up reading Playboy than immature self-obsessed crap like Maxim or Cosmo.

An inability to define where the line must be drawn does not mean that this particular thing should be banned. Rather than drawing qualitative lines, why not take it on a case-by-case basis?

<snip> where you would draw the line. Eight year old’s in Hustler T-shirts? Fcuk branded knickers for pre-teens?<snip>

Well, where do you draw the line in stopping this deviant behaviour?

Contemptuous looks following by a disapproving clucking of the tongue? Firm notes sent to their parents? Misdemeanour fines? Stonings by Burka-clad Morality Squads?

What’s it going to take to stop these kids from using Playboy Brand Stationery???

Is serving teenager girls the equivalent of microwaved sexual identity ready-meals not going to leave them not only not knowing exactly what they are consuming but lacking in the cooking skills to prepare their own?

Surely we’d all agree that teenagers need to be able to define their own sexuality, over time and, ideally, formed mainly through contact with their peers.
Does a sexual brand not hinder this as branding by its nature is always going to encourage conformity as opposed to diversity?

By the same token, Playboy is just reinforcing its brand, as fluffy as it might be, which is all about soft porn.

Supermarket Asda incurred the wrath of parents last month for targeting girls as young as nine with see-through black lingerie. It later withdrew the range, blaming an ordering error. Of course it was.

God, but she were ugly, though.

I came to it from Harry of the Place, expecting myself to agree with him and indulge in a minute or two of stentorian moralising.

Actually, your comparison of the two varieties of femaie sexuality offered by Playboy and Cosmo is convincing.

Isn’t the G2 article also vastly overestimating the weight of smut the Playboy brand carries?

Surely, the fact that the bunny is available on schoolgirls’ pencil cases indicates that the Playboy brand has been diluted over the years, and not that we are falling into a pit of moral depravity where 15 year old girls (rather than boys) read porn.

Rather than denoting ‘smut’, or porn, for consumers, it seems as though the Playboy brand has been boiled down into some more inoffensive tones of glamour and decadence.

And every fifteen-year-old doing GCSE revision is entitled illusions of decadence and glamour.

And, frankly, I think 15-year-olds are better off looking “glamorous” than the opposite trend – looking like sexualized pre-teens.

(Besides, statistically speaking, HIV is the least of most people’s worries in the UK. Until recently, however, their fear of it had the benefit of encouraging behaviour that massively reduced the spread of other damaging but far more common diseases.)

May be true, according to whatever statistics you used, but it would tend to suggest, would it not, that the “committed” bit is only one way round?

I don’t think my wife is at much risk of contracting HIV from me…