Next time you head into the Tesco on Magdalen Street you may have to hunt around for your usual dose of inappropriateness: Tesco and Waitrose are to move any explicit or sexual content from newspaper and magazine front covers above the eye ine of children. The move is surely cause for celebration by two campaign groups, Child Eyes and No More Page 3.

Both groups are pretty vocal about the explicit showing of female flesh on display in tabloids and on shop shelves.

Not a day goes by when one of my social media feeds isn’t trending something posted by them.

The Child Eyes campaign began when one mother was innocently grocery shopping and noticed that the newspaper stand – directly in the eyesight of her four-year old son – was showing explicit images of a scantily clad woman. Through no fault of her own – and certainly a few years before her young son should understand that a naked body sells, and sells well, she had inadvertently exposed him to our beautiful and bountiful (and bouncing) world of sexuality. She was understandably horrified that in one instant her son’s experience of the adult world could change so fundamentally. Even within my generation, I was a child who – well below the age of 10 – watched (terrible 80s) movies like Roadhouse in which very explicit scenes awakened my inner adult much earlier than they probably should have done. Many people would say, ‘Well, it didn’t do you any harm’. And a few years ago I would’ve agreed with them.

But I’m a little older now (is this what age does?) and I feel like maybe it did have a detrimental effect on me.

Scenes in 80s movies were all rose-spectacled, with gorgeous, skinny women desired by Patrick-hunky-Swayze-in-his-hey-day.

Apart from anything else, I soon found out – devastatingly – this is not real life. Hmmpf. So on the surface, this move by Tesco and Waitrose seems a small drop in the ocean.

The children of today are a generation who have to bat away explicit reference and images each time they blink.

They’re bombarded with advertising designed – solely, it seems – to appeal to our carnal desires.

They have open access (in many cases) to the internet via a small device they hold in their hands and hide under their bed covers.

But for parents who are trying their hardest to prevent children coming prematurely into contact with highly charged images, or images showing less than desirable gender stereotypes, isn’t it only fair the rest of society plays its part, too? After all, these are our children, too.

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