Elle's Pregnant Jessica Simpson Cover: Too Racy for Grocery Shopping?

Is a pregnant woman's body not safe for supermarkets? An Arizona grocery store has allegedly censored an Elle magazine cover featuring a very pregnant Jessica Simpson in her birthday suit. Issues of the glossy are getting the Hustler Magazine treatment, placed behind a make-shift cardboard "shield" on the rack so only Simpson's face peaks out, according to Jezebel.

A reader to the site sent in to photo of the cardboard covered issue in a Tucson Safeway. Jezebel's Cassie Murdoch, waiting on a statement from the store manager, took a critical look at the offending issue.

"True, her breasts are somewhat exposed, but it's not too different than what you could see on this year's Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit Edition cover," writes Murdoch. "And what do you think the chances are that they covered that up?"

For the record, the naked pregnant cover shot is nothing new. Demi Moore kicked it off on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991. That issue was banned by three grocery chains in North Carolina (including the Winn-Dixie), but overall it sold gangbusters at newsstands.

"It's just a pregnant woman. I guess it's what's in your mind," Marvin Bate, a Utah-based magazine stand manager promoting Demi's issue, told the Deseret News in '91. Now, more than two decades later, the celebrities' favorite pregnancy pose is still too much for some people to handle.

So is the image of a happy couple and their newborn child, if that couple happens to be two men. Elton John and David Furnish's baby photo on the cover of US Weekly was placed behind a family shield in Arkansas last year. So file 'pregnancy' and 'family' under too-hot-for-grocery-shopping.

In the category of "least likely to be censored" are heterosexual nude women who aren't pregnant. Remember when Bar Rafaeli posed nude on the cover of Esquire the same month Sacha Baron Cohen in the character of Bruno posed nude for GQ? Guess which one didn't get banned from the racks? Similarly, a barely-legal, barely-dressed Jessica Biel showed a lot more chest than Simpson when she posed for Gear back in 2000. But since there was no baby bump, there was no family shield.

Related:
Famous, nude and pregnant: a look back
Jessica Simpson's nude pregnant Elle cover
Strange logic of banned magazine covers