A friend called Tom told me he went into WHSmith, and opened up the lads mags on explicit pages and placed them all round the shop, and near the entrance, to expose to customers, the degrading and pornographic content of these magazines. He said one woman went up to one of the opened lads mags, and said, 'I don't like that, I don't like that at all!' and promptly closed it!This is a great way to draw people's attention to the degrading imagery that WHSmith sell, and can prompt people to complain. It exposes WHSmith for the 'not-so-family-friendly' shop that it is. And also...it's legal!
So I headed off to do the same!
After I took this photo, I turned over all the front covers of the lads mags to the porn adverts.
People walked past the array rather bemused. Men would walk up to the rack, to read the mags, but then walk away! An elderly gentlemen took one off the shelf just to see what
magazine it was. This is a great way to expose lads mags for the porn that they are. I also placed the opened lads mags on a window display, to make the visible connection between WHSmith and porn.
I opened up ZOO on a 'Hunt for a Virgin' article, and placed it next to the queue for the till, so that customers could read about the degrading competition.
Then, I stood next to the lads mags display, and when men came over to read the mags, I took a photo of them. They then asked me what I was doing, to which I replied, 'I am taking a photo of the face a misogynist'. I explained they are being misogynistic because they are reading a lads mag. They were rather embarrassed, and one guy begged me, literally, to delete the photo of him reading FHM.
This idea was inspired by Rebecca who said she used to take photos of men going into sex shops to intimidate them!
But then, a security guard started loitering around the lads mags display, so I moved swiftly on!