As published at Collective Shout
The festive season is here. You only need to look at the latest shopping centre catalogues, online stores and even your facebook news feed to see that companies are working hard to compete for your Xmas dollar.
But lets not forget which of these companies have used sexploitation to flog their products in 2013! Before you buy gifts for friends and family, check our list. Vote with your dollar and boycott companies that have sexualised children and objectified women for profit in 2013.
City Beach – looks like a surf shop right? Take another look. City Beach has a long history of selling products with sexist, violent and porn inspired imagery to its youth market.
Images of objectified, naked women can be found on T-shirts, shorts, wallets, thongs and even pencil cases. Read more about City Beach.
Target sexes up violence against women with its “50 shades of grey” branded Lingerie, based on the “erotic” BDSM novel of the same name.
Porn inspired billboard advertising for the brand included a woman posed submissively in suspender stockings and another woman pictured in lingerie with BDSM wrist restraints. Read more.
Bookworld, the online retailer formerly known as Borders was called out for selling hundreds of incest themed novels, typically eroticising rape of children by a father figure.
Bookworld put the issue down to a computer glitch and promised to resolve the issue. At the time of writing, these titles are still listed for sale online. Details may be distressing, but you can read more here.
Best and Less were selling matching “bra” and underpants sets for girls as young as two.
When asked why they thought a two year old girl needed a “bra” Best and Less agreed to remove the garments, referring to a store policy prohibiting the sale of “bra-like” products for children under 8. But they didn’t keep their word. Read more about Best and Less here.
Roxy released a trailer for the Roxy Pro Biarritz 2013 Women’s surf competition. The promo featured a topless woman writhing around in a bed and no actual surfing.
We supported a petition created by pro-surfer Cori Schumacher who called on Roxy to stop their “all sex no surf” advertising. Roxy responded by complaining about “mischaracterisations” of their brand. Read more here.
Cafepress has been exposed for selling baby “onesies” with slogans such as “SL_T all I need is U” and “No gag reflex”. Despite repeated reassurances by Cafepress that this content would be removed, similar items remain on sale. Read more about Cafepress.
Got Foxtel? Thinking of getting Foxtel? Give it a miss! The network produces the toxic “Australia’s next top model” program and this year it promoted the show with its “Next best selfie” promotion, which involved soliciting images from underage girls on social media.
An outdoor ad campaign for a Foxtel channel featured a man sodomising a pig. No joke. Read more here.
A Bonds “Boobs” outdoor advertising campaign to launch a new range of bras reinforced a dominant cultural message that “Boobs” are what is most important about a woman. Worse still, the ad campaign was justified as marking a renewed partnership with the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
Breast cancer survivor Rachel Lonergan described the campaign as “peurile.” Read more here.
We’ve challenged Cotton On before for their sexualised baby bodysuits and their pornified t-shirts. The Cotton On group also owns Typo. Read more here.
Typo came under fire for its Back To School sale selling items such as coffee mugs, drink bottles, notebooks and i-phone covers with porn inspired images. Read more here.
Despite their Respect and Responsibility policy, the AFL have continued to remain silent while ex-Hawks player Lance ‘Buddy’ Franklin used his status as an AFL player to flog his pornographic Nena and Pasadena clothing line. Read more here.
Lance Franklin owns and promotes Nena and Pasadena pornified fashion brand yet also markets his Buddy Ball to children, presenting himself as a role model for young boys.
He is not. Read more here.
Lynx, men’s deodorant, marketed towards teenage boys, produces advertising campaigns that objectify and degrade women.
General Pants has a history of explicit, sexist, and degrading advertising campaigns including sex industry inspired stunts. Read more here.
Roger David glamorises violence against women to sell men’s clothing. Read more here.
American Apparel uses porn-inspired sexually exploitative advertising.
Mossimo advertised its range of underwear with a promotion called “Mossimo Peepshow.” The Facebook “peepshow” competition invited entrants to upload images and compete for votes. We decided to submit an entry of our own.
Why would we do that? Read more here.
Supre are guilty of sexualising their tween market with ads featuring a topless young woman, as well as selling t-shirts with sexualised slogans.
Retailers and brands that sell ‘porn t-shirts’
Earlier this year we campaigned against ‘rape-is-fun’ rapper Tyler the Creator. Surely venues hosting the events would cancel once they learned of his violent and degrading lyrics?
Wrong.
We haven’t forgotten about the weak response from these venues. Particularly, the Eatons Hill Hotel which still refused to cancel the final show in Brisbane after reports that a young woman had being raped at Tyler’s Sydney gig the night before.
If you’re looking at organising a function for your end of year festivities, think twice before booking at these venues. Read more about the Tyler the Creator campaign.
Do you have anything to add to our list? Let us know what brands you will be boycotting in the lead up to Christmas. Better still, tell us about some positive alternatives. Which brands do you support and why? Post details in the comments below – together we can create a list of positive options!
To get things started, check out these two online sellers.
Toward the Stars – a safe haven from the commercialisation and sexualisation of girlhood, from the toxic gender stereotypes that dominate the marketing, media, and products targeted to children and young adults.
Gifted Hands – a not for profit organisation raising awareness and funding to help charities and organisations who support the widow, needy and homeless both here in Australia and overseas. Visit site.
9 Responses
Good on you Collective Shout. A shameful list.
Thank you for all your hard work to try and make the world a safer place for girls and women.
Extensive list! Got any list of recommended companies TO buy from? Is there anyone in the clothes industry actively promoting dignity? Or is that just naive?
This is an appalling long list of shops. Tragic when well known companies such as Target are part of the list as well. Will they every learn that we don’t want such horrendous clothing?
Positive gift ideas for tweens and teens promoting healthy development:
FESS UP! This interactive game is fun, fun, fun for teens to learn about themselves and the situations they may encounter in the world around them. Beautifully presented, this Question and Answer Card Game provides teens with a safe place to discuss scenarios which need to be handled with care – giving them an opportunity to prepare in advance and make smart choices. Also on sale in the Youth Wellbeing Project Store: books for tweens: ‘Does my bum look big in this ad?’ and ‘Media Muscle’
http://youthwellbeingproject.com.au/resources/store/Store/9-fess-up
BlossyBloom designs its range especially for teenagers – their range starts at 8A through to 14B, beautiful designs and no padding or underwire in their range.
http://blossybloom.com.au/
Wings is a special book; one that your child will hold on to forever – an opportunity for important people in your family’s life to complete a chapter celebrating your son or daughter and acknowledging that he or she is one of a kind.
http://www.claireeaton.com.au/shop/parent-resources/wings
Seriously you guys need to get a life its the 21st century unfortunately everything we buy these days the back ground of which it comes from is unknown so what your saying is dont shop at these places and at these places because for eg they sell bras and knicker sets for 2 yrs just don’t buy them christ sake its not that bad seriously your sad
“just don’t buy them christ sake”
Um, well, exactly. The more people who just don’t buy them, the stronger the message to corporations and marketers that this junk doesn’t have a market. So yep – don’t shop at these places, support the ethical alternatives instead. I think you’ll find that’s how the 21st century rolls.
Hahahaha yes, I have to agree with you in a way Kylie, ‘just dont buy them’ is the entire point of this campaign.
I think you will also find ‘ethical consumerism’ is a huge step forward, we do know the ‘background’ of where our products come from now, and we are taking steps to ensure it is ethical. If you find the notion of ethics sad, then thats a sad shame for you.
The rest of us will get on with making the world a better place to live in. Happy christmas!
Mabe if we dont buy from those shops they will think next time they go to advertise like that, good on you for makeing this list !! shame on these retailers !!
What about all chemists, Coles, woollies, newsagents , Kmart, Target. They all sell playboy products.