Editor of erotic, fresh thinking and feminist-infused glossy Scarlet, Sarah Hedley shares her views and ambitions with marmaLADYa.com

How did you get started in journalism?
Straight out of college I went to work at Maxim when it was just starting out. There was a lot of sex coverage, as part of Maxim’s ethos was to educate men about sex. As the only female writer I became the Sex Editor – why would a guy know how to please a woman? It was great fun. After four years I went to work at the Sun. I had a weekly column where I gave general sex tips, talked about celebrity trends and answered readers’ letters. The brief was to write a really sexy column, full of tips which people could go home and try, but without mentioning sex too much. You had to deliver every tip via euphemism and the power of suggestion! I did that for two years and then worked at Cosmopolitan as the Sex Editor, before coming up with the idea for Scarlet with the founders of The Erotic Review. We got a good team of people together – writers who worked for nothing in the early days because they believed in the project. Scarlet launched in November 2004.

What makes Scarlet different from the rest of the glossies?
The aim was to produce a mainstream women’s glossy with a few key differences. It wouldn’t do diets. It’d be honest about sexuality, exploring the full range of female desires as well as having a sense of humour. It’s sexually suggestive, arousing and very funny! When I worked at Maxim I got loads of letters from women asking ‘Why can’t you set up a Maxim for girls?’. They asked for a man on the cover, more humour and more filth. I think British women are strong and confident. They love sex and know what they want. We provide honest articles about the whole spectrum of sexuality and erotic stories.

What do you think about the size zero debate?
I’m committed to using real women and models of all sizes in our shoots. It’s a direct way to help and encourage women to feel better about their body image. When Scarlet gets bigger I want to get together with all the other magazine editors and say ‘Right, what can we do to address body image?’.

The June issue has a great feature on feminism. Is this a theme you’re planning to develop?
We’ve been going for two and a half years and we felt it was now time to speak out. We’ve had so many letters about it. We didn’t want to be labelled feminists. We’re quite happy to be called Scarlet feminists. That’s a term we use in the office. Our agenda is about equality for both sexes, rather than just women’s rights. It’s talking about things like regulations for the beauty industry to stop women consumers being exploited through pseudo-science advertising. When an advertising company says here’s a product to make you look younger, the sub-text is it’s bad to look old – so we now all think it’s bad to look older than 25. In addition, advertising companies use completely unfounded pseudo-science to sell stuff. I’d like to see feminism moving towards sorting out a regulatory body where all the cosmetics and beauty manufacturers have to pay a certain amount of money to an independent body which checks the science and stops words from being made up! And the same goes for advertising for men. We want the men in our lives to be strong, happy men.

Do you think that such a strong editorial focus on sex might be considered anti-feminist?
The idea that wanting to give a good blowjob is anti-feminist means you’re saying sexuality revolves around you and nobody else but you. You’re saying that your partner’s sexuality does not matter. You’re then becoming what you’re fighting against. We want to clarify that. If all we did was run blowjob features, it’d be horrific. But we don’t. We run features on how to get as well as give good oral sex. Satisfying a person is a turn on – you should be aroused by the sexual response of your partner.

What would you say to the anti-porn feminists?
I know a lot of women who work in the sex industry. It’s not something I have the balls, or the body, to do. But if I had both and did it, it wouldn’t be from an anti-feminist point of view. It’d be from an ‘Oh my God, this is a great way to make money’ point of view. There will always be people who experience it differently, who are coerced into it and do if for the wrong reasons. But if you’re a strong person, making money in the sex industry is not the worst life, it really isn’t. Documentaries deliberately try to find the victims. You can go into an admin department and there’ll be the one who gets picked on, the one who gets exploited. It’s just not as cut and dried as ‘All women who work in the sex industry are exploited’. To go at it from such a staunch point of view is archaic, outdated and it can’t work. Women in wet T-shirt competitions are not all victims. Some of them are deliberately working it for their own ends. By saying porn should be banned and that it’s a hate crime would equate to taking away a career and source of revenue from many women. The idea that we need to get rid of porn to protect women, but not men, comes from that really dated viewpoint that ‘Men love sex, but women don’t’.

Is there anything you did when you first launched Scarlet that didn’t go down that well?
One thing that I was surprised at was the response we got to running a photo shoot with a real woman and not covering a spot on her bum! We decided in the vein of keeping it real to keep the spot on her bum and not airbrush it out. But readers didn't seem to like that. I think it was a little bit too earthy. While there’s beauty in all shapes and sizes, maybe there isn’t in something as transitory as a spot!

You’ve got some unusual covers planned for the next couple of issues. Tell us more…
We’re going to put a man on the cover and see how that goes down. We always get loads of letters asking for a guy on the cover and we’re dying to do it. The problem is both men’s and women’s magazines always sell better with a woman on the front. Let’s hope it works! We’re also planning to put a real woman on the cover too – we’ll be getting our readers to send in pictures. And we’ll see how that goes down too!

Scarlet is available at your local newsagents. Find out more at www.scarletmagazine.co.uk. And subscribe to Scarlet's weekly email newsletter Harlot.