Seven out of ten tanning facility owners will remove Cosmopolitan Magazine from their lobbies and waiting areas because of the beauty magazine’s complete lack of objectivity when it comes to covering UV light and sun exposure.

“The magazine has made it clear they care more about the profits of multibillion “Sun Scare” advertisers than they do about the health of millions of North American women,” Smart Tan Vice President Joseph Levy said, commenting on a SmartTan.com poll conducted last week. “For a magazine to continue to suggest that women can be healthy without UV light, to downplay and deny the benefits associated with UV while exaggerating the risks associated with overexposure, it’s clear that Cosmo has left the scope of journalism and is nothing more than a one-sided slant sheet.”

While three out of 10 salons said they would keep Cosmo in their lobbies, the advent of Real Magazine in the past two years has given salons an alternative to Cosmo’s one-sided message.

“If a salon is going to keep beauty industry anti-sun propaganda in their lobbies, they really should have material in there to balance it out. That’s what Real magazine does,” Levy said. “Make sure you’re putting that in clients’ hands.”

Cosmo is the flagship of the Conde Nast family of beauty magazines, which includes Allure, Vogue, Self and other titles. In 1999 Allure magazine ran a campaign urging readers to boycott tanning facilities. Smart Tan, in turn, asked tanning salons to collect signatures from tanners who promised to stop reading Allure. Levy delivered more than 4,000 cancellation letters to Conde Nast.