Sexy Books and Magazine News

The Australian supermarket Cole's has banned the latest issue of fashion magazine, Harper's Bazaar .

Cole's cited easily offended customer and justified the censorship in a statement:

We didn't think the cover was appropriate for our stores so the decision was made.\

He added that customer feedback prompted the dumping.

Later a spokesman refused to comment on why the cover, shot by renowned fashion photographer Steven Chee and featuring Miranda Kerr standing in a pair of stilettos, covering her naked breasts with her arm,

Miranda Kerr's management has fired back at Coles questioning the motives of the supermarket's censorship. Kerr's manager Annie Kelly said:

There have been numerous examples of similar covers sold without restriction that celebrate and support women and this is no different. They seem to have used it to get publicity during the busiest trading time of the year.

Pamela Anderson will be the last person to pose nude for Playboy magazine, closing a more than 60-year tradition of nude centrefolds.

Playboy magazine said that the former Baywatch star will be featured on the cover of the January/February 2016 edition that will be on sale in December. She also gets a 12-page photo spread inside.

Playboy, founded in 1953 by Hugh Hefner, announced in October that it would stop publishing nude photos of women.

Playboy says it will continue publishing but the promised sexy, seductive pictorials will not be nude. We will soon see if the any readers actually buy the magazine for the articles.

FHM and Zoo are to close by the end of the year, marking the end of lads' mags in Britain

Publisher Bauer Media described the closures, which are still subject to a consultation on the future of 20 jobs across the two titles, as a suspension, but the plan is to close both the print and digital versions of the magazines by 2016.

The closures reflect an overall decline in magazine sales, generally attributed to porn being widely available for free on the internet. Both titles have seen steep declines from their heyday. FHM's circulation fell to less than 67,000 for the first six months of this year, while Zoo was selling just over 24,000 copies per issue.

Australia's extreme feminist group, Collective Shout!, claim that Zoo magazine's final gesture is aimed at them, claiming:

Now defunct Lad's Mag Zoo Weekly devoted its final issue to us with this cover.

Activist Laura Pintur crowed:

We were pleased to report that after our successful campaign to get sexploitation mag Zoo Weekly out of Coles supermarkets Bauer Media announced the sexist lads mag was closing.

This week Zoo Weekly released their last edition ever. We're glad that pornographers will have one less outlet now to push porn to underage boys.

Playboy magazine will stop publishing pictures of fully nude women because the ubiquity of internet pornography has made such images passé, the company's chief executive has revealed.

CEO Scott Flanders said founder Hugh Hefner had agreed with a proposal to stop publishing images of naked women from March 2016.

The redesigned Playboy, 62 years after it was launched by Hefner, will still feature a Playmate of the Month and glamour pictures but they will be rated PG-13 (an advisory rating that cautions that material may be inappropriate for children under 13).

The Playboy website has already been given a makeover and made safe to read at work, resulting in younger readers and an increase in web traffic.

The chief content officer of the magazine, Cory Jones, said the magazine would be more accessible and more intimate, admitting: Twelve-year-old me is very disappointed in current me. But it's the right thing to do.

The magazine's circulation has dropped from 5.6m in 1975 to about 800,000 now, according to the Alliance for Audited Media.

So now we will see if anybody actually does read the magazine for the articles. I doubt it.

One of Ireland's top sex shop owners has called for the ban on Playgirl magazine to be lifted.

Twenty years after Playboy first appeared on the top shelves of Ireland, sale of the feminist answer to the title is still prohibited.

SexSiopa.ie founder Shawna Scott this week urged censors to Play fair over soft porn in 2015. She said:

I'm shocked that Playgirl is still banned in Ireland. But I think it's a perfect example of the double standard in our culture that celebrates straight men's sexuality, whilst viewing that of women and gay men as shameful.

Perhaps now on the 20th anniversary of the unbanning of Playboy in Ireland, it's time to make Playgirl legal too.

A spokescensor for the Censorship of Publications Board - a five-person State body - told Review:

Playgirl was first prohibited in 1974. [After] this prohibition order expired, a second prohibition order, which made it permanent, was granted. Prohibition orders can be revoked on appeal, as can second or subsequent orders which, when made, are permanent unless revoked on appeal.

Razzle, Mayfair and Men Only are among the titles back on Irish shelves after publishers mounted one such appeal back in 2011. But there are 266 magazines that are still banned.

The Australian edition of the lads' mag Zoo will publish its final edition on 12 October and close its website following continued fall in sales

The axing of the Australian edition of the title by Bauer Media is not unexpected as the company withdrew from the official magazine audit last year after sales plummeted 36% to 24,122 copies.

Another men's magazine, Penthouse, is also winding up its Australian-produced edition after 36 years due to dwindling sales.

The free availability of pornography on the internet has made these magazines filled with photographs of near naked women harder to sell.

New Zealand moralist campaign group, Family First, is calling for the lads' mag Zoo Weekly to be banned from supermarket shelves.

A petition that started in Australia, calling for supermarkets to stop stocking men's magazine Zoo, was picked up in New Zealand by Family First. The campaign group is calling for Countdown to follow the Australian example and ban men's magazine Zoo from its shelves.

But a spokesman for Countdown New Zealand said it has no plans to remove the publication from its shelves, and that it takes responsible steps when displaying the magazine. And many members of the public have agreed, saying they don't find the magazine offensive.

The petition to drop Zoo from Woolworths, which owns Countdown stores in New Zealand has about 40,000 people calling for the store's chief executives to bin Zoo magazine immediately .

Laura Pintur, who started the campaign, spouted:

When I heard Zoo was regularly promoting rape culture and sexism with phrases like 'you want to pick the loosest/skankiest one of the lot and fetch her a drink...separate her from the flock'. I couldn't stand by and watch it promoted to kids at supermarkets.

Family First National director Bob McCoskrie whinged that the magazine did not belong on supermarket shelves:

I think if I showed you it, you see it promotes a rape culture, it objectifies women, teaches boys to be predatory, it's the continued sexualisation of women. We want to encourage families to politely speak to managers and ask if it's appropriate to make a profit out of these messages.

But a Countdown spokesperson said it was just one of more than 1000 stockists selling the magazine around the country. The supermarket sells less than a quarter of Zoo magazines in New Zealand, and they were appropriately positioned in store, he said.

A PC lynch mob has targeted Australian shops selling lads' mags.

Laura Pintur started an online petition three months ago calling on supermarket majors Coles and Woolworths to ban Zoo Weekly from their shelves.

An employee at Coles joined the campaign, writing to her union and store manager with an official complaint claiming that selling the magazine contributed to an unsafe workplace and made her complicit in promoting rape culture .

Now the two are claiming a victory, with Coles announcing that it will withdraw the title from sale. In a brief statement, the company claimed it had made a commercial decision to delete Zoo magazine following a regular range review . Pintur crowed:

Zoo Weekly teaches boys that girls like me and my friends exist purely for their sexual use. I couldn't understand why Coles and Woolworths, which pride themselves in their corporate responsibility, family values, and care for their local communities could profit from selling this harmful product. By discontinuing Zoo , Coles has finally done the right thing for women and girls.

IWoolworths indicated there were no plans to withdraw the magazine. A spokesman said:

Zoo magazine is widely available across retailers, newsagents and many other outlets. To reduce the exposure to these magazines in our store, we have it positioned in the magazine reading centre in the aisle in the top right corner. We do not position it at the front of store or on the checkouts in recognition that some customers could be offended by the magazine's content.

Loaded, one of the titles synonymous with the mid-1990s lads' mag boom, is to close after 21 years.

The last issue of the monthly magazine, which launched in 1994, is the April edition which is on sale now. the publisher said in a statement:

As of the current April issue, published on March 26th, Loaded will cease to trade as a printed magazine. We would like to pay tribute to our customers, staff and especially our contributors and editorial team.

Loaded was once one of the the leading titles in a booming lads magazine sector, with sales of 350,000 in 2000. After declining sales, the publishers recently tried a sexed down version but that doesn't seem to have panned out.