So there I was
the other day, gently pootling around in my kitchen with the telly on in the
background, adverts running their subliminal messaging, barely disturbing my
washing up reverie... That was until the refrain of Alicia Keys caught my
attention. I turned to the black box of glory as a befreckled, curly haired
ginger lass appears on screen. She’s looking at her sporting idol on her iPad,
until her mum comes over, they share a moment as the mother introduces her to her childhood sporting idol, and they
share a blissful 30 seconds of mother daughter bonding, celebrating fantastic
women through the years, all brought to you by the power of high speedbroadband. Ahhhh. How lovely I thought, go on with your female empowerment and
celebration, all brought to you by Virgin Media for only…. Wait. High speed
internet?! Hang on there just a minute billy bob! They’re after my cash! My reverie was shattered,
my advertising agency induced fuzzies disappeared, leaving me with a distinct
sense of being had.
You see the
thing is, I won’t disagree, female empowerment is to be celebrated, as is
female sporting achievement. And mother daughter bonding is a great thing, as
is the vision of women publicly & easily using tech. However, what I almost
forgot in my advertising trance is that this is no warming scene of mother
daughter bonding; this is a TV advert, hijacking my warm fuzzies in an effort
to get my (presumably pink) wallet out of my teeny tiny handbag and make me buy
something. Gah, I thought to myself, I was fooled! My warm fuzzies were
manipulated! How dare you! I switched my telly off in a pique of feminist fury
and on with my washing up I went… (and if any of you dare point out that irony,
trust me, you’ll have more than just pique on your hands).
The thing is,
this isn’t a new thing. It has name and everything…. FEMVERTISING. Ugh. It
makes me shudder just typing it. The Dove beauty campaigns have been doing it
for years, boosting our buying confidence by showing us proud Dove using women
of all shapes and sizes. The Always advert hit the headlines earlier this year
with the #likeagirl campaign, challenging people to take back the assumptions
of what it means to do something like a girl, and reclaim it as a positive
thing…. But let us not forget, they were still trying to get viewers to buy
pantyliners and racking up 50m+ YouTube hits in an effort to do so.
I guess the
thing is, I’m not annoyed purely by these adverts, they are after all symptomatic
of further frustrations. It is a fantastic thing that there is a fourth wave of
feminism crashing on the shores of the world, but advertising companies are using
that wave to target the majority users of the product they are selling (whether
that be tampons or high heels) and in the majority, the controllers of the household
budgets. These companies have to make their money, and femvertising (there goes
that shudder again) appears to be a good way of doing it.
However what
would be better, and a massive step in the right direction, would be if there
didn’t have to be these campaigns to begin with. If companies didn’t HAVE TO induce the warm
fuzzies when you see a young girl celebrating a sporting hero on the internet,
because a female sporting hero should be celebrated in the mainstream anyways.
Likewise, women being proud of their shapes and sizes ought not to be a novelty
on our TV or movie screens, it should be our normality. And advertising more
than just beauty products at a female audience shouldn’t have to make me turn
my head in surprise, because guess what, we make up 50% of the consumer market
out there, and we have money to spend too.
As Laura Bates
of the BRILLIANT Everyday Sexism campaign says “while I applaud progress,
wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where we didn't have to celebrate ad
campaigns that give children equal access to toys or don't present women in a
sexist way -- because [those things were] just the norm?". And to be perfectly
honest, I couldn’t agree with her more…
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