I remember the framed Playboy bunny symbol that was over my bed when I was a child. My parents really didn't know about the symbol's pedigree, and had put it up on purely aesthetic grounds.

In retrospect, quite amusing.

CULTURE: Playboy for Schools: "One of Britain's leading stationary retailers top selling brands is its Playboy themed range.

'Playboy is probably one of the most popular ranges we've ever sold,' says head of media relations for WHSmith, Louise Evans. 'It outsells all the other big brands in stationery, like Withit [a range of cute cartoon animals], by a staggering amount. That should give you an idea of how popular the brand is. We offer customers choice. We're not here to act as a moral censor.'

Several protest groups are up in arms about the use of Hefner's logo on stationary aimed at children. Eleanor Kirwan of Coloma Convent Girl's School has organised numerous protests outside WHSmith's Croydon, London branch.

The pressure group Object, which is also campaigning against WHSmith's promotion of the Playboy brand to children, says: 'Playboy's logo clearly represents pornography. The magazine routinely features sexualised and full-frontal images of naked young women. It also promotes pornographic videos and strip shows. Playboy is about men buying women and presents this as natural and normal male behaviour, together with fast cars, football and male role models (not shown naked). WHSmith is therefore endorsing pornography to young, impressionable and possibly underage girls.'



Kirwan says the teenage girls in her school 'are aware of what the Playboy icon is' and 'were saying that, even though the pencil cases feature no blatant pornographic images, the bunny symbol represents pornographic images. The girls are able to acknowledge that symbols have a deeper significance than that which is on the surface. For stockists and manufacturers to deny this is shockingly disingenuous.'



But for WHSmith it's a style choice. 'We believe it is a fashion range,' says Evans. 'There's no inappropriate imagery. It's just the bunny. It's a bit of fun, popular and fashionable.'



While some will always defend the media being saturated with images of women as sex objects and the mainstreaming of porn as 'a bit of fun', others are deeply concerned about the damaging effects it is having on the perception of women. Kirwan's class debates confirm that children do not always understand that media representations of women are not real. 'The girls do not yet have the mental sophistication to recognise that the Playmates are not real. They don't realise that the image of female beauty that they see in the media is staged and not something they can expect to emulate. They really didn't know about the amount of styling that someone like Posh [Victoria Beckham] has. I do recognise an attitude among the older ones that it's not a problem to be a glamour girl or a playgirl. '



Talking about any kind of sex, particularly in school, is excruciating for some children. 'One 12-year-old told me,' says Kirwan, 'that since we had started discussing the stationery, she had thrown her Playboy pencil case away. 'It's gross. I don't want that on my stuff,' she said. These are girls of the age where even using the words sex or pornography can be embarrassing. Lots of the 11- and 12-year-olds hadn't even heard of pornography and yet had the porn king's logo on their school equipment and plastered across their chests at weekends.'

Considering the age of the children buying this range, what do you think?

(Written by: SomeOneUK)

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(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)