The mysterious case of the disappearing warm & fuzzies

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…

Are the sisters doing it for themselves?

It can’t have failed to escape anyone’s notice that it’s not long to go before the general election, 20 days to be precise and for me, one of the things that has really stood out in this particular democratic campaign, is the women. It’s not just the fact that there has been far more high profile women than I’ve seen in elections previously, with Sturgeon, Green & Bennett purportedly holding the political balance in their hands as they pack political punches at swivel eyed Farage. Nor is it the fact that taking into account the number of women standing for election and current polling, parliament could see its biggest ever influx of female MPs. No, for me it’s more than that, it’s the women around me that I’ve noticed more, and this can only be A Good Thing.

According to an article I read this week, over 9 million women failed to vote in the last general election, a figure I find both staggering and depressing. If you look at the younger demographic (younger than I unfortunately) the problem gets even worse with a mere 39% of women aged 18-to-24 voting in comparison with 50% of men in the same age bracket. Yikes! That’s terrifying! Can it change? Well fingers crossed, and judging from the very small pool of my mates, I’m hoping it will this year. Ok, ok, pub conversations involving alcohol may be less reliable than actual facts and statistics, however it seems to me that more of my female mates are engaging politically this year, to a higher degree than I’ve witnessed previously. Whereas the vast majority of my female friends have investigated parties, debated pros and cons, and certainly registered to vote, whenever I’ve encountered a lackadaisical ‘they’re all the same’, ‘what’s the point’ response, it has invariably made its way into this world from the mouth of a man. Now, I’m not going to slate all my boy mates here, there are some that are raring to go come 7^th May, voting cards at the ready so they are certainly not ‘all the same’, but it seems to me that this year, the sisters really are doing it for themselves and I’m wondering what it is that has turned the tables?

Well, the Guardian reader within me certainly points to the effect of the current government, after all, no matter what paper you’re reading, we’ve all seen the statistics that suggest that under David Cameron’s leadership it is women who have lost out the most (and no DC, a heads up, I won’t ‘calm down dear’). Certainly the very public female leadership of some of the leading minority parties has played a part, you only had to see the reaction to the recently televised leaders debate to witness that. I’d also like to think that the relatively recent acceptability of feminism has had a role to play too. The prominence of the work of Everyday Sexism & the No More Page Three campaign are just two examples that have not only spurred on a generation of young women to proudly wave their feminist banner high, but also kick started my generation to realize that just perhaps we never really achieved the gender equality that the 1990s ladette culture promised.  In my humble opinion, the reasons for it don't matter, but if these factors combine to get more women voting, this can only be for the better.

With only 4 weeks to go until the election, I can only hope female voting really does improve this time round, and if my friends are anything to go by then it certainly should. But the real key to improving matters is actually getting out there and doing something… With only 3 days left to register to vote, it’s crucial that us women (& all the chaps out there too) make sure we can actually get our voices heard. If you haven’t done so already, it only takes 5 minutes, so get on it, please! Handy link hint here: https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote.

p.s apologies for the slightly ranty, serious tone of this blog. Normal service will resume shortly…. promise.