Find out why Peterborough's Serenity Loves is dumping the gossip magazines

Serenity Loves, in Oundle Road, has removed a range of magazines it claims may harm customers' sense of well being and replaced them with reading material to make readers feel 'happy'.

The award winning salon has provided a number of so-called 'gossip magazine' titles for about eight years.

The move to ditch the magazines prompted an invitation to salon owner Jo Bevilacqua to appear on Channel Five's Jeremy Vine show to discuss if encouraging customers to read so-called educational material was patronising.

The debate was sparked by the announcement that many hair and beauty salons nationwide would no longer make gossip magazines available for customers after complaints their coverage of celebrity Caroline Flack may have contributed to her death.

Jo said: "As someone who has not read newspapers or gossip magazines personally for years I have decided, along with my management team that we will not be purchasing them for the salon either.

"We do not want to support the magazines where they are photoshopping one person’s body to look better whilst picking out every single ‘fault’ of another’s.

"We have always been a hair and beauty salon that thrives on positive behaviour, within our team, with our clients and within our community."

The salon has replaced the gossip magazines with more positive material which includes the happy newspaper, adult colouring books, ‘Put Yourself First’ by Marianne Killick, which is

a busy woman’s guide to thriving not surviving.

Along with other positive books, Serenity Loves have also joined up with The MamaKind Club to giveaway mindfulness journals for children.

Jo said: "We do not want to support the magazines where women are pipped against each other and portray the message that there is only room at the top for one to succeed.

"A wise woman once said, ‘you are either part of the problem, or part of the solution’” and by getting rid of gossip magazines we are hoping to be a small part of the solution to a kinder world."

She said that many of her customers are busy mums whose time is precious.

"So the team wants to make sure that every minute spent in the salon is a happy one.

"When you are not feeling great about yourself and you come into a salon to make you feel better what you don’t want to see is celebrities being pulled down and reading magazines fuelled with negativity as this is not healthy. Bringing more positivity into the salon can’t be a bad thing.

"We are a welcoming and non-judgmental salon with staff and customers lifting each other up bringing more positivity into the salon.

"Serenity Loves want to make sure that they are making small, conscious decisions to make a change, and with these small changes will add positivity into the salon, with their customers and the community."