Thing is, they all sound the same and at this stage of the game, where the campaign has been in existence for well over 6 months and we've created an FAQ sheet answering their monotonous cries of 'Well don't look at it then, you're blatantly jel, you munter', I'm bored of hearing the same lame arguments being used against us.
For the millionth time:
It is not about the images themselves, but the context in which they are presented!
However recently a new complaint from our faithful trolls has been cropping up, involving a certain topless bloke mowing the grass all in the name of Diet Coke.
'You hypocrites' they cry, 'You'll get rid of our tits but leave the Diet Coke bloke free!'.
Naturally this got me thinking, were we being hypercritical? Were we leading a campaign with a 'do as I say, not as I do' attitude? Well, no, actually we weren't.
The Diet Coke bloke (starting to feel bad about calling him that, really must find out his name) is an advert. In the same way that David Beckham swoons about in his tighty-whities for H&M and Armani, or the way Rosie Huntington-Whiteley lounges about in her underwear range for Marks & Sparks or Agent Provocateur.
That's advertising. That is NOT a group of human beings deciding to stick a half naked young lady on a page of their newspaper everyday, calling it a feature, for the sexual gratification of it's male readers.
I'm not saying it's alright to sexualise human beings in order to sell a product, as one of our brilliant supporters said, 'Wanting an end to the objectification of women in the media does not mean I want to see the objectification of men instead. Inverting the problem is not the answer.' So if our lovely trolls could stop comparing the two, that would be wonderful, because they simply aren't the same.
Similarly, the idea of Heat Magazines 'Torso of the Week' keeps cropping up, to which I point this - Every single week, without fail, Heat has at least one article on some celebrity female who, at a size 10 and 10st is clearly a fatty. There are countless 'Beach Body' features within the publication all of which aim to show us how 'normal' these 'overweight' celebs are when really all they do is belittle not only the confidence of their readers but the bodies of these human beings (because yes, despite the yachts in St. Tropez and the 96 house staff, celebs are humans too). Now tell me, do you see, in The Sun, features anywhere that belittle and objectify the male body as well as the female body... No?
No. You don't.
So do not, dearest haters, sit there and condemn us for not condemning the pages of Heat Magazine when the publication itself spends 99% of it's page space making women feel inferior in their own skin too.
We get it, you want the tits to stay, but this isn't `1972 and honestly, if you're so reliant on a newspaper to see some boobs then maybe you need have good look in the mirror and sort your lives out.
Just a thought.
-xo
Good article, Hayley, neatly skewering the people who defend things by saying 'yes but what about [insert name of different bad thing here]?'
ReplyDeleteHowever, I don't think we should characterise those who disagree with us as trolls and haters. Obviously there are such people, but when people have honest disagreements with us, I think we should calmly and rationally dismantle their arguments and show them (and others) the error of their ways.
And that's what you've done in this article. So thanks!