Shropshire salon ditches 'gossip' magazines after death of Caroline Flack

Marta Power, who runs Hair by Marta in Market Drayton, said she had taken the decision after being inspired by her friend, Derek O’Grady, also a salon owner.

Marta, 34, said she wanted to get rid of the negativity associated with the gossip coverage of celebrities, and would instead only have lifestyle and cooking magazines for clients to browse.

She said: “My inspiration came from another stylist, Derek O’Grady. He had put up a little post on Facebook and we are in the same hairdressing learning group.

"He inspired me to remove any sort of negativity from the salon, body shaming, making people feel worse than they are.

“The high expectations of looks that people desire these days. You have teenagers going round who want to look like 30 year olds full of botox, you should be whoever you are.”

She added: “We want to be a positive salon. You do not want to put more pressure on how people look and feel. You want them to be comfortable with themselves.”

There has been a country-wide movement by salons to remove gossip magazines from the news that Caroline Flack, 40, took her own life after publicity over an assault charge.

Earlier this week her family released an unpublished Instagram post from the presenter in which she appeared to talk about the impact of reporting on her life, referring to “shame and toxic opinions on my life”.

Ms Power said: “Everyone has feelings and everyone is human. If I said something bad about you, you would totally feel it, so imagine having 100,000 people gossiping about you. How would that make you feel?

"She was only human as well.

"As bad as it seems hopefully something will change and there will be a change to people’s lives and she will be remembered as a game-changer.”

In his original post Mr O’Grady explained why he had removed the magazines, saying: “Something in me had changed, I didn’t enjoy this picking apart.”