A STOKE Newington newsagent known for campaigning against top-shelf pornography has now turned his attention to the sexual content of teenage magazines aimed at girls.
Hamdy Shahein, 56, is advocating setting a legal age limit to prevent young children from reading popular teenage titles like Bliss, Sugar and Mizz.
Mr Shahein said: “These teenage magazines are really disturbing. They give children the wrong idea about sex and are making them grow up far too fast – you can see the results of this in the rates of teenage pregnancy these days.
“I would rather lose business than sell magazines I don’t agree with.”
The Egyptian-born newsagent’s comments come in support of a scathing attack on the magazine industry this week by the chief executive of the government’s consumer watchdog.
The head of Consumer Focus, Ed Mayo, claimed that teenage magazines are responsible for the “early sexualisation of children” and branded the Teenage Magazine Arbitration Panel, the organisation charged with regulating the content of teenage magazines, a “toothless watchdog.”
Mr Shahein said that he never allows pre-teen girls to buy magazines with sexual content in his shop, Hamdy’s Newsagent.
“I will also now make sure that teenage magazines are on higher shelves and are not placed next to children’s comics,” he said.
Mr Shahein, who has lived in Hackney for 26 years, said he also tries to educate parents about the content of the magazines their children are reading.
“Often these magazines have a cellophane wrapper over them, so parents can’t check the content before they buy them. It’s another gimmick that they use to push the boundaries with their content”.
Mr Shahein hit the headlines in 2006 after winning a long-running battle with WHSmith over their distributing magazines to newsagents in pre-packaged selections. The policy, he argued, prevented retailers being able to choose which titles they sold.
Over 500 shops are now members of Mr Shahein’s ‘porn-free’ network.
“I have been running this business successfully for 26 years – that’s proof that you don’t need to sell top shelf magazines to make a living.”
Annabel Brog, editor of Sugar, defended the magazine. “The average age of our readers is 14, nearly 15,” she said.
“We have very little sex related content but every single mention is in direct response to reader queries, for example answering questions on a problem page.
“We do everything we can to help them say no to sex, no to bullying and no to extreme dieting, yet critics constantly quote headlines out of context and try to brand us as irresponsible.
“Whenever someone accuses Sugar of running inappropriate content I always say ‘Can you please show me where.’ Invariably they can’t”.
Hamdy’s quest for a porn-free Hackney
- Hamdy Shahein has organised a network of porn-free newsagents since 1989.
- In a battle with his magazine supplier, WHSmith News, to keep his shop pornography-free, Shahein eventually won an apology and offer of compensation from the company, which he says wrongly sent him hundreds of top-shelf magazines.
- Over five years, the newsagent collected around 1,800 magazines and newspapers sent by the company that he considered to be pornographic.
- Mr Shahein attempted to conceal the pornographic titles by placing them in large brown envelopes, with only the titles visible – an approach also adopted by some supermarkets.
- Mr Shahein has been named as the best neighbourhood newsagent in the Living London Awards by readers of The Independent and listeners of London radio station LBC.
There is a lot more to this story than meets the eye. This newsagent also bans non-porn gay lifestyle magazines like Attitude. It's much more to do with his own prejudices than any kind of desire to protect young people's morals. He's trying to wage a moral war based on religious ideology – and it strikes me that the church, mosque or synagogue would be a better forum than Stoke Newington High Street.
Only giving this sort of information to older teenagers is too late. Girls are starting their periods younger than ever these days at 10 or 11 years old – they need information about what is happening to their bodies, In the 1980s in the provinces some kids at my school were starting to have sexual relationships at the age of 13 – I'm sure that this is also the case in Hackney today. It is has nothing to do with magazines (what are the 12 year old boys reading, are magazines responsible for sexualising them too?) it is human nature. This move will only help to keep girls ignorant making them more vulnerable to getting into unwanted.sexual situations, making them more anxious about their bodies and more likely to end up with an STD or unwanted pregancy.
I think what Mr Shahein acheived with his battle with WHSmith was admirable. While I'm not anti-porn I really don't think it should be sold alongside comics, newsppapers and magazines where people (especially children) are confronted with it as they go about their daily business. But, on this I think he has got it wrong. I was a pre-teen in the mid 1980s and I learned everything I knew about sexual relationships, sexual health and puberty through magazines like Girl and the more racy Just17. My parents, like many others, were unable to discuss any of these subjects with me, and I would have probably run away screaming with my fingers in my ears if they had tried anyway. In fact, I think my Mum might have bought me these magazines for the very reason that she was to embaressed to raise these subjects with me. Other parents might not be so coy, but still might have peculiar or religious outlooks that mean that their children would still benefit from the independent and reliable advice the magazines give.