Your say / feminism
‘Children should be protected from the societal bullshit that says women are judged by their looks’
There’s a big billboard just on the corner of Atlas Road and St John’s Lane in Bedminster. It features a beautiful bikini-clad woman posing by an idyllic-looking pool and is emblazoned with the words ‘I saw it first’.
I have walked past it countless times and probably wouldn’t have batted an eye if it wasn’t for the fact that this very same advert sparked controversy this week when campaigners spoke out to slam its “sexist and objectifying” message.
Their criticism prompted an article on Bristol Live (focusing on the same billboard, but in North Street) and a fairly predictable onslaught of responses from both sides, with some expressing dismay at its anti-feminist sentiment and others dismissing concerns as political correctness gone mad.
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My initial reaction was somewhere down the middle.
Firstly, is it sexist? I don’t find anything offensive in seeing women in bikinis. The billboard certainly didn’t instil the same rage in me as those TV adverts that insist on spouting out the tired old stereotype in which women do all the housework, while their menfolk are wholly incompetent.
I imagine the model featured in the advert might well argue against the notion that she is being exploited and, were the advert in a glossy magazine, it probably wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows.
But that’s the point. It isn’t placed inside a publication that adults choose to pay for and consume. It is positioned right next to Victoria Park Primary School, in the heart of a residential neighbourhood, and it is unavoidable for all who pass by.
And it exists in the context of a society that pays lip service to aspirations of equality while consistently peddling the message that women are judged by their looks. And that the route to happiness and success lies in achieving the perfect body or outfit or hairstyle.
In this increasingly digital age, children – boys and girls – are under unprecedented pressure, with one in ten young people between the age of five and 16 suffering from a mental health issue and a dire lack of services to help provide the support needed.
I have heard a girl as young as five compliment her mum on a dress that “makes you look really skinny”. These messages go in and are already part of the everyday rhetoric of young people well before they are properly understood.
Children can’t be wrapped in cotton wool, but they should be fiercely protected from the societal bullshit and all-too-frequent reminders that women are judged by their looks, and men on their achievements.
A billboard in St Werburgh’s as part of a campaign to make it an advert-free area
Unlike many campaigners fighting against billboards such as this, I have nothing against advertising in the right place. Indeed, it is largely our advertisers that keep us in coffee and biscuits here at Bristol24/7. Advertising can be used for many good causes and is not inherently a bad thing.
But advertisers, particularly those who dominate public space with their billboards, should be held to account for the content they are promoting to our communities and children.
This may just be one advert for one company that is taking the brunt of the blame for a much wider issue, but we need to challenge accepted norms more and question what affect they might be having on a population already straining under the pressures of modern life.
I would love to think that future generations of women won’t feel judged by their appearance, and that the gender pay gap and glass ceiling won’t exist, and advertising companies will realise that most men know perfectly well how to use a bloody washing machine.
If we have to tear into a few billboards to get there, then I’m on board.
Ellie Pipe is News and Business Editor at Bristol24/7.
Read more: ‘We want corporate advertising removed from our public spaces’
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