Did Walmart take Cosmo off its register racks in support of the #MeToo movement? An anti-porn group that had spent years demanding the magazine’s removal finally succeeded as the nation’s top retailer agreed to keep the racy magazine away from its checkout lines. According to the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, the change came from a heightened post-Weinstein sensitivity to objectification of women:

Executive director Dawn Hawkins said: “This is what real change looks like in our #MeToo culture.”

She added: “Cosmo sends the same messages about female sexuality as Playboy. It places women’s value primarily on their ability to sexually satisfy a man and therefore plays into the same culture where men view and treat women as inanimate sex objects.”

Walmart senior director of corporate affairs Meggan Kring said customers could still find Cosmopolitan in magazine sections.

Cosmopolitan’s parent company, Hearst, did not immediately comment. Victoria Hearst, a member of the media family, has worked with the NCSE in campaigning against Cosmopolitan.

Not everyone agrees that Cosmo was problematic in the age of #MeToo. In a segment for NBC’s Today show, Jo Ling Kent presents some conflicted reactions to the news that the sexually liberated might need to look in the magazine rack for their preferred forum:

Does this really have to do with #MeToo, though, or with Walmart’s desire to be seen as family-friendly? Some commentators will rush to argue the former and discuss it as backfire to women’s empowerment, but that seems a stretch. NCOSE has been hammering Walmart and other retailers for years over the easy access to sexualized material on store racks. The timing is probably just fortuitous enough to leave the gloss that Walmart didn’t cave to puritanical demands but instead took a stand for women.  It won’t put much of a dent in Walmart’s profits to move Cosmo to the magazine section, and it saves them the ongoing headache of complaints about racy materials where children are present.

That’s not to say this won’t have an impact. Kent concludes by noting, “The big question this morning: will losing that prime real estate offered at the checkout lanes of Walmart impact Cosmo’s sales?” Well, yeah, especially since a large component of magazine sales are impulse purchases. That’s why Cosmo makes its covers as racy and suggestive as they are, and why they couldn’t afford to tone it down. They’re competing with salacious headlines from the National Enquirer, People, US, InTouch, and other entertainment publications. Sex sells. It’ll just have to sell more intentionally at the magazine rack.

The bigger problem for Cosmo is that other retailers might make the same moves — Target for one, supermarkets and large-chain convenience stores, too. Rite Aid and Food Lion fell into line three years ago, well before Harvey Weinstein got exposed.  Without those impulse buys, can the magazine survive? And which magazines will get to take that prime real estate that Cosmo occupied? I’m betting it won’t be Boy’s Life.