This week advertising executive Madonna Badger of New York’s
Badger & Winters announced a new
campaign against the “objectification of women” in advertising.
“I am
your mother, daughter, sister, coworker, ceo. Don’t talk to me that way.”
Badger and her business partner Jim Winters
created a video featuring various women holding copies of ads and calling for
change.
Featuring controversial ads from Tom Ford,
Balmain, American Apparel, Burger King and Carl’s Jr. among others, the video
had 5.3 million impressions as of Monday, January 25.
In announcing the #WomenNotObjects campaign,
Badger promised that her shop “…will never objectify a woman again in any of
the advertising, content, posts — any form of communication that we do for any
of our clients.”
Because sexism in advertising has been around
for years, this is going to be a big conversation. We can all agree that
advertising has used images of the female body or female sexuality in a
positive way for a long time. But this campaign exposes the worst offenders. I
know you’re itching to include Donald Trump in this context, but I will resist
the – uh oh, too late.
Some of the work shown in the video is
downright cringe-worthy. In my view, it is the result of clients who don’t have
the capacity to discern between a thoughtful idea that celebrates the female
mystique, and an overt objectification – tits and ass – for a cheap laugh. They
have no good ideas, or even a clue of what good creative is. And sharing the
blame for these atrocities are the “yes people” who work for them – at their
agencies or in-house departments. They’re not exactly the “best and brightest”
either.
Another thought comes to mind in the form of a
question. It’s important to ask: Do women objectify themselves by being slaves
to fashion, following ridiculous trends, and buying into the “unrealistic body
images” pushed in advertising and entertainment programming?
Is there room for women to have their own
personal style, outside of all this nonsense, without being downtrodden,
image-wise?
Is this just another clever,
agency self-promo? I’m not cynical enough to go there. To Madonna and Jim I
say, “Let’s keep the conversation going.”
