Back when I was a kid that was a thing, because my parents objected to the objectification of women and so I could never have a subscription, because it included the Swimsuit Issue. My father got it through his store and brought it home to me, but disposed of the Swimsuit Issue instead of bringing it home. I was really annoyed too, because there would always be references to articles from that issue in the letters of subsequent issues. It came out once football was over, before spring training and before the playoff races started heating up for the Stanley Cup, so there were never any real events I was in danger of missing coverage of, but every now and then there was an interesting profile or analysis article that I had to read on microfilm at the library. That was okay, because nobody is going to get their rocks off with black and white negatives of mostly nude models.

Anyway, that's kind of moot now, since the Swmimsuit Issue is a seperate magazine with absolutely no pretensions to sports coverage, and the last time I subscribed, it was through a fundraiser for my neice's girl scout (or whatever they call five year olds) group, and there was the option to refuse the Swimsuit Issue which I virtuously checked off (I'm in my thirties. Human clothes racks minus clothes are hardly worth setting a bad example should my neice actually happen to read the catalog to see what her uncle bought, or the trouble of disposing of it).

I think the expression could also apply to the sort of person who thinks Playboy or Penthouse is sufficiently classy to excuse buying or reading in public. I remember back in '88 or '89, during an NFL game, seeing ads for the upcoming Playboy issue which was supposedly breaking the story about Jimmy Hoffa's corpse being buried under Giants Stadium, which occasioned a great many "reading it for the articles" jokes from my father and uncle. I suppose there is a certain degenerate portion of society that would not consider one of those magazines sufficiently pornographic to reject, while still feeling the obligation to defend their choice of periodical.