They don’t deserve your Christmas dollar: Give these companies a miss this year!
Every year in the lead up to Christmas we release our annual blacklist of corporate offenders - the companies which have objectified women and sexualised girls to sell products and services during the year – and refused to change their unethical behaviour. Our supporters use this list as a guide to help them make ethical spending choices.
Vote with your wallet and refuse to financially support brands that profit from sexualising and objectifying women and girls. Send a message to companies which have failed to uphold Corporate Social Responsibility standards, that sexploitation doesn’t sell. If they don’t understand ethics, perhaps they will understand when they start losing money.
Etsy
We exposed global online marketplace Etsy for selling child sex abuse dolls and body parts, as well as incest and child abuse-themed merchandise including items with the slogans “Daddy’s little c*ck whore”, “Harder Daddy” and “Daddy’s c*mdumpster”. Despite a number of Etsy sellers shutting up shop in response and almost 50k signatures on a change.org petition launched by Melbourne musician and mother of five girls Anna Cordell, Etsy has ignored us. Give the shopping platform a miss this festive season. Read more.
Honey Birdette
A regular fixture on our Crossed Off list, the Playboy-owned sex store consistently broadcasts sexist and pornified representations of women to an all-ages audience in shopping centres around the country, with Ad Standards having now upheld complaints against a whopping fifty Honey Birdette ads. From sexualising and pinkwashing breast cancer for profit, eroticising violence against women and allegations of sexually harassing, mistreating and bullying their young female staff, the sex store is a repeat corporate offender, continuing to violate ethical standards and disempower women and girls. Boycott Honey Birdette this Christmas, and always. Read more.
Shopping centres
If you could possibly avoid them, stay away from the major shopping centres which continue to host Playboy-owned Honey Birdette’s porn-themed advertising, facilitating the display of sexist and sexually objectifying content to an audience that includes children. We have been calling on these centres to take actions for years – and 77,000 of you have signed Melbourne father Kenneth Thor’s petition. But their ‘Champions of Change Coalition’ CEOs (who pledge to stand against sexism) have ignored our concerns. We understand it might be difficult to avoid all of these shopping centres at this time of year, but we encourage our supporters where possible to consider other alternatives. Please also boycott children’s activities including photos with Santa which, as we’ve documented, are often held in close proximity to the sex store. Click here to see the complete list of shopping centres.
City Beach
The global Playboy porn empire is expanding its market to children and young people. Playboy Kids and Australian youth retailers like City Beach stock Playboy-branded clothing and accessories. We first exposed City Beach flogging porn products to teens a decade ago. Now they are doing it again, promoting Playboy - a major brand of the global pornography industry - to its youth market, with t-shirts, hoodies, shorts, socks, hats and beanies all emblazoned with the Playboy logo and images of women’s objectified bodies. Shop elsewhere for your young person this year. Read more.
General Pants
General Pants has a long history of using sexual exploitation to sell products, from change rooms plastered with pornographic imagery, live pole dancing displays, and a series of very large sexist shop front ads featuring young women in bikinis alongside slogans such as “Wet dreams” and “Slippery when wet”. Read more - and stay away!
Chocolab (NSW)
While our team loves chocolate and can’t get enough of it, we are staying right away from NSW-based chocolate company Chocolab whose Facebook post promoted a block of chocolate featuring the slogan “F*ck me Daddy”. While they removed the post after pressure from Collective Shout supporters, other chocolate blocks displayed on their website also featured degrading pornographic slogans. Look for sexploitation-free chocolate to enjoy with friends and family this year. Read more.
UltraTune
Vehicle servicing company UltraTune has attracted hundreds of complaints for their sexist ads which depict women as mindless bimbos who can’t operate their vehicles. The company continues to demonstrate disrespect for women by hiring high-profile men with histories of rape and violence against women to star in their ads, including Mike Tyson and Charlie Sheen. The company reportedly recruits women for its advertising from a strip club owned by CEO Sean Buckley, who has been charged for allegedly choking his former female partner, and for stalking and threats to kill. Send a message to UltraTune – get your car serviced somewhere else this Christmas. Read more.
So where can I shop?
Looking for some ethical alternatives? Check out the companies which have signed our Corporate Responsibility Pledge not to objectify women and sexualise girls in advertising, products and services. If your business doesn’t engage in these unethical practices, please sign our pledge – and we’ll let our thousands of supporters know!
See our past Crossed Off lists here.
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