Scarlet was a monthly women's magazine launched in November 2004 with the tag line, "the new magazine for women who get it". It was published by Blaze Publishing Ltd, since sold to Interactive Publishing. It was distributed UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

-wide at retailers such as W H Smith

W H Smith

WHSmith plc is a British retailer, headquartered in Swindon, Wiltshire, England. It is best known for its chain of high street, railway station, airport, hospital and motorway service station shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers, and entertainment products...

, Tesco

Tesco

Tesco plc is a global grocery and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Cheshunt, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest retailer in the world measured by revenues and the second-largest measured by profits...

, Superdrug

Superdrug

Superdrug Stores PLC is Britain's second-largest beauty and health retailer behind Boots. Superdrug - part of the AS Watson Group which in turn is part of the Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa - is a UK based company with over 890 stores, which since 2006, includes the Republic of Ireland...

 and Somerfield.

Intentions

Scarlet claims to empower women to lead healthier sex lives through "frank informative features that talk to the readers the way women talk to each other when men aren't around." Its erotic fiction section 'Cliterature' attempts to promote safe sex through eroticising condom use. It has recently launched a campaign against Fatism in the media. Scarlet has received positive reviews in UK daily newspapers The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

and The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

.

Criticism

Although Scarlet has been described as having "feminist stripes" it is also said to promote sex as a consumer commodity, to depict little variety in women's body shapes and to promote a pornography-influenced view of women's sexuality similar to that described in journalist Ariel Levy

Ariel Levy

Ariel Levy is a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and author of the book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Vogue, Slate, Men's Journal and Blender...

's book Female Chauvinist Pigs

Female Chauvinist Pigs

Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture is a book by Ariel Levy which critiques modern feminist culture in the United States and elsewhere....

.