Nena and Pasadena: objectification on a shirt

Another clothing brand jumps on the porn tshirt bandwagon

[UPDATED] AFL footballer a designer and model for Nena and Pasadena.

Recently, a Collective Shout supporter alerted us to 'Nena and Pasadena' a clothing brand which produces pornified tshirts. Nena and Pasadena is stocked in stores such as City Beach (are we surprised?) Edge, Live and Globalise.

Caitlin wrote on our community page:

Some of you may have come across the clothing brand “Nena and Pasadena”, stocked at City Beach, edge, Globalize and Live clothing stores. It is a major contributor to the pornographic t-shirt trend.

There are images of women from the back, naked from the waist down. There is one with a topless women, with her breast and nipple uncovered and exposed-with a scarf covering her entire head. Another has a topless woman covering her breast with her hand along with the slogan “Angel of silence”. And there are plenty more.

Having pornographic images on t-shirts is both confronting and offensive to women. They are made worse with sexist slogans and depictions designed to silence women, e.g. “angel of silence”, and the topless woman who has a scarf around her head so she cannot talk.

Nena and Pasadena have a billboard on Queen Street in Busselton, WA, featuring two pictures- on the right, a woman wearing a dress, and on the left, and man wearing a white t-shirt with the words “Angel of the City” underneath and the image of a woman’s naked lower half from the bottom down. This is just another example of images of women reducing them to specific body parts, as she has no face, just a naked back side. This picture is also the profile picture for Nena and Pasadena’s facebook page.

Another supporter - Kylie - has already received a patronising, nonsense response from Nena and Pasadena, mocking her concerns. What can we expect from those who think the objectification of women is acceptable?

Thanks for your comments and views  but we feel we know what young people want to wear so we choose to continue our design concepts in full. I have three teenage boys of my own and have discussed your email with them, they were humored by your thoughts and added that the 6 o'clock news contained far more adult contact than a tshirt!!  If you feel that we degrade women or promote violence against women please further your emails to the editor of the herald sun.

We have never yet had a complaint regarding women on our Tshirts except for yours.This clearly puts you I'n the minority and reinforces my views that we are not doing anything wrong or inappropriate. As i wrote before- if you are unhappy complain to a newspaper or someone that wants to tolerate your minority views on censorship.

We doubt very much that this is the first complaint Nena and Pasadena have ever received. However, lets make sure it's not the last.

Caitlin provided some useful contact details in her post, inviting others to take action. We have listed them below. Please join us in speaking out against the objectification of women on clothing.

Update

Since posting this article a Collective Shout supporter enlightened us to the fact that the model wearing these shirts is none other than AFL footballer, Lance 'Buddy' Franklin. Franklin is in fact, one of the designers for Nena and Pasadena, alongside Tim Arandt, (the charming individual who sent the patronising response to Kylie's complaint) Ryan Griggs and Paul Edwards.



It is interesting to note that the AFL  has a policy called the 'Respect and Responsibility policy.'

The Respect and Responsibility Policy represents the Australian Football League’s commitment to addressing violence against women and to work towards creating safe, supportive and inclusive environments for women and girls across the football industry as well as the broader community.


The Respect and Responsibility Policy is about shifting attitudes – ensuring that people throughout the Australian Football industry are aware, and have structures in place, that recognise that violence against women and behaviour that harms or degrades women, is never acceptable.

(bold ours)

The AFL's website goes into detail about how the AFL is committed to developing initiatives and programs for players which will promote equal and respectful relationships with women. Anti-sexual harassment and anti-discrimination procedures have been put in place. There is a focus on developing safe, supportive and inclusive environments for women across the football industry, as well as the broader community.

This all sounds great. So where then, do these t-shirts fit within that broader goal of a safe, supportive, inclusive environment for women? Pornographic images, images that objectify and degrade women in the public space, including on t-shirts are a form of sexual harassment and discrimination.  Does the AFL approve of their players developing and promoting shirts that degrade, objectify and therefore harm women?

These are very good questions to ask the AFL. Contact details below.

Take Action!

Contact the AFL here:

http://www.afl.com.au/ (Direct links to the contact page don't work. Go to the home page, scroll down on the right hand side to 'AFL Links' where you will see 'contact us.')

To complain about Nena and Pasadena's advertising (for example, the billboard Caitlin spoke of in Western Australia) contact the Advertising Standards Board.

http://www.adstandards.com.au/

To make a complaint to Nena and Pasadena, contact them here.

http://nenaandpasadena.com/contact.html

Contact the stores that stock the Nena and Pasadena brand:

City Beach

http://www.citybeach.com.au/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ContactView?s...

Edge

http://www.edgeclothing.com.au/contact.html

Globalize

[email protected]

Live

http://www.liveclothing.com.au/go/live-stores&contactLive

As always, please share any letters you write with us in the comments section below, as well as any responses you receive.