a·pol·o·gy
noun, plural a·pol·o·gies.
a written or spoken expression of one’s regret, remorse, or sorrow for having insulted, failed, injured, or wronged another
I find myself pondering the question: do the editors at Zoo Weekly Magazine understand what an apology is?
This week a Change.org petition, initiated by Collective Shout supporter Matt Darvas, a man who, with his family, cares passionately for refugees and is deeply engaged with refugee communities in Newcastle, NSW, resulted in an apology from Zoo for an appalling competition to find Australia’s sexiest boat person.
Zoo Weekly was asking female asylum seekers who had “swapped persecution for sexiness” to send in pictures — and joked about “shooting” them with a camera.
In the world of lad’s mags like Zoo, even female survivors of the most horrendous human rights violations on earth can be offered up as masturbatory material for its male readers. Hot refugee women for you to get off on! Brutalised beauties for your viewing pleasure!
Less than 24 hours after Matt launched the petition, and with 6000 signatures and growing, Zoo announced it was ditching its evil competition.
The apology, published on its website and hardcopy issue stated:
“ZOO Weekly regrets any offence caused to any of our readers, and to any asylum seeker or refugee and their families and supporters. We apologise for being insensitive.” — Tim Keen, editor of Zoo Weekly
Mr Keen, editor of jerk-off weekly, said the apology was extended to Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young.
Zoo had tried to persuade the Senator to pose for the magazine, promising to host “the next boatload” of asylum seekers in its office is she did so. She said no. But no matter. The editors just photoshopped her head onto the body of a bikini model. Problem solved! No consent required!
Nothing will stand in the way of Zoo reader’s ejaculatory fantasies – even a woman who says no. As ACP – publisher of Zoo – states,
“ACP Magazines leads the industry in knowing what matters the most to magazine buyers…”
Especially men who want to get off on female political leaders.
But wouldn’t an apology mean you’d take down the original post? To show you were serious? The July 2 piece featuring the hybrid Senator/lingerie model woman is still there. They haven’t removed it.
Which suggests they don’t really mean it. Regret, remorse, sorrow? Who actually believes that?
The same publishing house that brings you Australian Women’s Weekly, Women’s Day and Dolly (which recently took out the Federal Government’s inaugural positive body image awards) also churns Zoo’s special version of female degradation through the same printing presses.
Have the female editors and staff of these magazines, which claim to advance female equality, had anything to say about their stablemate’s treatment of female refugees and elected representatives. The condemnation should be loud and unequivocal.
Without any accountability to or discipline from ACP, Zoo continues to be enabled to continue this exploitative and sexist behavior.
See also: ‘Because all women must be brought to their knees’, MTR, October 26, 2010
The day that summed up the sheer ludicrousness of what it meant to be the editor of Loaded, the most notorious ‘lads’ mag’ of all time, is one etched on my memory.
It was January 2004, and my team had been through our rivals’ magazines doing a ‘nipple count’ — meticulously tallying the number of bare nipples that appeared in one issue.
To our dismay, we’d been trumped by Maxim, who’d weighed in with a hefty 83 (which included one bare-chested man, but we let them have that).
‘Damn, they beat us this month,’ I announced. ‘What are we going to do about it?’
When one wag responded, ‘Why don’t we print 100 pairs of boobs, over six pages, in glorious close-up?’ we all whooped with delight and reported to the pub to celebrate.
So it was that we did a ‘We Love Boobs’ special, which notched up a then-record (although by today’s standards relatively tame) 200 nipples.
As an extra layer of schoolboy comedy, we decided to caption each picture with a jokey term for breasts. From ‘aardvarks’ to ‘Zeppelins’, we had it covered.
Sitting around a boardroom table with six other university-educated men trying to think up 100 comedy words for breasts summed up just how low British men’s magazines had sunk.
7 Responses
There’s a difference between being truly remorseful about your actions and being forced into a so-called apology. C’mon guys, man up. Dont target the most vulnerable people in society, the ones that dont have a voice or cant fight back. And treat women like you would expect others to treat your own mothers, wives, daughters for God’s sake.
Sarah Hanson-Young should just sue them (a co-suit with the woman who’s body was used). That is the only thing dude-world seem to understand, money as the bottom line.
It is amazing the level of misogyny lad’s mags get away with. If their target was (primarily) a racial demographic rather than female (of any demographic), they would be outlawed.
What do expect from Zoo? Nothing. What I do expect though is that other companies withdraw their support from this misogynist publication. I’ve never bought it but would be interested to know who advertises in it.
I read a lot of comments last week from people giving Zoo credit for how the piece might have ‘humanised’ asylum seekers and created a bit more sympathy among an otherwise hostile target market. Well I call BS. Turning a human tragedy into a cheap joke closes people’s minds. And turning women into objects is DEhumanising.
Meanwhile, ACP’s support isn’t even tacit. They are actively standing by and profiting from this sewage. Isn’t their head of media a woman, too? Shame on all of them.
And what about the sponsors? Who can we boycott?
I was cynically waiting to hear/read that Zoo’s fake apology was precisely that – fake not real. Well done Zoo for continuing to promote male hatred/male contempt for women.
As regards fact Australian Women’s Weekly, Women’s Day and Dolly are all published by the same group which publishes that porn mag Zoo, I suggest we take a look at which sex are the ones clinging tightly to their right of deciding what is and is not published. No guesses the power will be held tightly in the hands of men and it is men (as always) who are the ones deciding what publications will be printed and what format.
So target the owners of Zoo porn mag because someone is profiting from Zoo’s continuing pornification of women and no it is not women – never has been never will be.
Other companies commonly put profit before women’s right not to be reduced to men’s sexualised waste disposal units but companies are always terrified their profits will decrease if consumers state they will no longer buy these companies’ products.
Of course ‘people’ meaning men condone Zoo’s pornification of women but guess what these males would never condone Zoo depicting men as women’s sexualised disposable waste units. After all male dignity and male autonomy is sacrosant but male hatred/male contempt for women is acceptable because men continue to proclaim women are not human so therefore ‘no human was harmed since the human(s) in question is/are females not males.
I am just so saddened & deeply disgusted by that childish repulsive cartoon. I agree with all of the above comments 100%.
I agree with you Melinda, is amazing as editor can do such thing! Pornography and such magazines are the cause or a least influence bad behavior. Man hook on to that staff are ruin their life.
The exploitation of the women’s by such magazine is evident and I can’t see why the law allowed that as is discriminating.
In this case using the image of an elected member of parliament is a vile contempt of the person!
The tentative to exploiting women already been abuse is another act of vilipend and discrimination, this is not free speech, is abuse of liberty, for economical profit.
My hope is that pornography will be banned as is only damaging our society.
God bless.