Porno Ralphs Supermarket

With little time left on my book, I made my rare trip out of my bubble to go to the market and buy more paper for my printer. BTW, A Fresh and Easy opened up within walking distance of our house. Sure enough, as soon as F&E opened, we got flyers in our mailbox with the F&E logo, but they were actually exposés about F&E's parent company, Tesco -- claiming Tesco sold expired food, hiring cheap labor, etc. Some of the infractions went back ten years. I looked at the fine print and the authors of these flyer/exposés, were a Ralphs, Kroger, Vons, etc. I don't have to go back five years to remember two strikes by grocery workers demanding health care. A little of the pot calling the kettle black. But I needed paper from Staples on this day, so I stopped at the Ralphs next to it.

While standing in the checkout line I noticed some of the magazines. There on the lower shelves at a four-year-old's eye level was the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition. They've always been sexy but these days they look more like the cover of Hustler. The model's breasts were huge, and her 'top' consists of necklaces covering her nipples. I realize that men's magazines have gotten racier, but if you go to the SI swimsuit page, it looks more like you're being invited to enter the call girl website that took down Elliot Spitzer down.

The woman checking out in front of me was taking a while, so I had some time to sit there and stew. Why was that magazine placed in the check out line? Didn't they have a magazine section? And what was it doing at Toddler eye level? I also know our culture has been accused of being too puritanical. Maybe I'm too 'square,' but I don't think that throwing sex into everything actually demystifies it. I think it just makes it totally worthless. Every cover of US or PEople talks about "Jen and John's sexy weekend," "Brand and Angie's sexy new floor coverings," "Lindsay Lohan's sexy blackout weekend." enough enough. Can't we leave some mystery in life? I know some people think that if we demystify sex it won't hold power over us. But I've yet to hear of a man who felt looking at porn took away the itch to see more, or that looking through Playboy gave him the desire to meet a real woman with real breasts.

I paid for my groceries and went to speak to the manager. I told him about the cover. "I'm all for free speech," I said, "but a naked Hustler type magazine isn't appropriate for the average check-out aisle, and definitely not at child's eye level. I'd like the children in my family to stay children for a while."

Teh manager said he'd received many complaints about the magazine. However, "Corporate makes those decisions for us, and they have to stay there." "Corporate." The disembodied faceless word that gets the blame for everything.
"But the space they're sitting in doesn't even say Sports Illustrated.
"It says Time Specialties. It's a specialty slot." (Which also means it can sit there indefinitely, like People magazine's "The world's most beautiful/interesting/fascinating/nauseating people of 200x"
"Ma'am, it's not my decision. It's a corporate decision, if you want to pursue it with them..." he looked away.
"Yes, I'd like that."
The manager handed me a business card for "corporate." It listed a phone number for a customer comment line. Sure I got it. A taped message that gets erased at the end of the day.

I got online and sent an email instead, figuring it might be a little more productive than leaving a message on some phone machine. I stated my concerns above. I also added: "I'm all for freedom of speech. You've got an extensive magazine section. You DON'T NEED to have a big breasted topless Hustler model sitting at a child's eye level where she has no choice but to look at it. If we cannot govern ourselves and make sensible decisions about our freedoms, eventually someone will come and make our decisions for us. ... and by the way, this Ralphs was also selling EXPIRED milk. So next time you accuse Fresh and Easy of getting caught with their pants down, remember you just did too. And you've got your top off as well. I'd rather shop at Fresh and easy than Girls Gone Wild Ralphs."

I finally got an email back from Corporate. "Ralphs has decided to use the "blinders" over the magazine's cover so that the magazine masthead is visible, but not the pictures."

I'm going to check and see that they actually follow through. It's stil pretty tacky that you can't walk through a check out line and have to see one of those porn covers. But then again, Ashlee Simpson was sitting there in a microbikini on the cover of Cosmo.

That was last week. This morning I ran to Fresh and Easy for something. No magazines in the check out. When i got back I found a Victoria's Secret catalog in my mailbox. Courtesy of Ralphs maybe?