Every year in the lead up to Christmas we release our Crossed Off list – an annual blacklist of business offenders who objectify women and sexualise girls in their advertising, products and services – and call on our supporters to boycott these unethical companies.
This is our 15th Crossed off blacklist to help guide you in your shopping choices.
This year’s list includes a number of repeat offenders as well as new additions we thought you should know about.
The lineup includes Melbourne-based t.shirt company Teepublic (owned by Articore) for trading in violence against women, global e.commerce giant Shein for sexualising children in products and advertising, and repeat offender - with 80 advertising ethics code violations to its name, Honey Birdette.
Once again we’re asking supporters to send these companies a message that we don’t tolerate business practices which cause real harm to women and girls. If they don’t understand Corporate Social Responsibility, perhaps losing money might help them see its importance.
Looking for ethical alternatives? Check out our CSR Pledge Partners – companies which refuse to profit from objectifying portrayals of women and girls. Please reward them for doing the right thing!
TeePublic
TeePublic - an online apparel company owned by Melbourne-based parent company Articore and headed by CEO Martin Hosking - sells and profits from products eroticising violence against women. Across multiple t-shirt designs, women are depicted bound, gagged, naked, treated as animals, degraded, humiliated and subordinate. We met with Articore executives earlier this year, and while they earlier pulled paedophilic-themed designs, we cannot stand by when they continue to glorify violence against women. Don’t let them get away with it – send Articore a message by boycotting Teepublic. Read more.
Honey Birdette
A regular fixture here, the Playboy-owned sex store has accrued over 80 ad code of ethics violations for its porn-themed advertising, including nine in the last month alone! Honey Birdette consistently broadcasts BDSM and porn-inspired ads to an all-ages audience – including its current “Merry Kinkmas” campaign. From pornifying breast cancer for profit, eroticising violence against women (including choking), fetishising female athletes, flight attendants and lesbians as objects of male fantasy and allowing a toxic culture of sexual harassment and bullying of young female staff, Honey Birdette continues to disempower women. Don’t buy what they’re selling. Read more.
SHEIN
We’ve previously included online fashion giant SHEIN on this list for sexualising women and girls. The Chinese e.commerce platform normalises a paedophilic aesthetic, advertising g-strings for toddlers and penis ‘squishy toys’ for kids. The corporate also sells illegal child sex abuse dolls and replica child body parts marketed for men’s sexual use. We’ve called them out and they failed to respond. Let them know what you think about their profiting from child sexual abuse material - boycott this unethical company. Read more.
Etsy
We first exposed Etsy for selling child sex abuse dolls and incest and abuse-themed merchandise in 2020. After our three-year campaign – including a petition by former Etsy seller Anna Cordell attracting more than 70,000 signatures – the platform introduced their Prohibited Items Policy which banned porn, sex dolls and incest-themed merchandise. However, Etsy continues to allow incest-themed content referencing interfamilial sexual relationships in violation of their own policy, along with a wide array of degrading, abusive, anti-woman items. Shop elsewhere this festive season. Read more.
Temu
In August we exposed Chinese online marketplace Temu for selling child sex abuse dolls, torsos, legs and disembodied doll heads marketed for men’s sexual use. While the company initially removed these illegal products, we have discovered more. They remain on the platform despite our reports. Temu also sells a wide range of pornographic female-bodied sex dolls and replica female body parts, contributing to the objectification and dehumanisation of women. Temu profits from harm to women and girls – let them know it’s not okay. Read more.
Cheeky Waffles
Cheeky Waffles is known for its porn-inspired menu items – penis and vulva-shaped waffles with names like ‘Playboy’, ‘OnlyFans and ‘WAP’ (a reference to Cardi B’s porn-themed song ‘Wet Ass P*ssy’). The company’s pornified social media includes images of penis-shaped waffles dripping with white chocolate sauce from their tips (mimicking male ejaculation) and degrading photos of women simulating oral sex on them. The company has been nominated for multiple Adult Industry Choice awards (awards for sex industry companies) and has been featured at sex industry trade show Sexpo, inviting social media users to “c*m … get your happy ending in your mouth or tits”. Source your holiday treats elsewhere this festive season. Read more.
Pickle My Chili
Victorian-based Pickle My Chili hot sauce brand uses women’s headless, objectified bodies to promote its products. The company’s hot sauce flavours are given female names, reducing women to products to be consumed. Some images pair women and sauce bottles alongside sexualised double entendres that could be read as referring to the women or the sauce. While Ad Standards upheld complaints against Pickle My Chili’s objectifying ads, the company defended the sexist imagery. Help Pickle My Chili understand that sexism doesn’t sell. Read more.
General Pants
We’ve documented General Pants long history of sexually objectifying women from our early days – sexist and porn-themed advertising, changerooms plastered with pornographic imagery, voyeurism-themed ad campaigns and live pole-dancing displays. In recent years, their “Welcome to Summer” campaigns portray women as interchangeable sexualised bodies. Women and girls deserve better – buy your clothes somewhere else! Read more.
City Beach
We first exposed City Beach pushing porn-themed products to the youth market back in 2010, and nothing much has changed since then. Now the retailer is selling Playboy – a major brand of the global pornography industry – to young people, with clothing emblazoned with the porn brand logo and images of women’s objectified bodies. Even given Playboy’s history of sexually exploiting women and children, and following revelations Playboy founder Hugh Hefner drugged and raped various women, City Beach has defended pimping the porn brand to their young customers. Give them another miss this year! Read more.
City Beach is also included in the line-up of stockists happy to broadcast the porn industry on its merchandise. They get a separate inclusion as well for their long history of sexploitation.
Calendar Club
The Christmas pop-up shop found in shopping centres across the country sells a range of porny pin-up calendars – faux lesbian, ‘erotic lingerie’ and thonged bums for any kids walking past to see (and right at their eye level). The casual objectification and dehumanisation as sexy playthings for men is a known contributor to men’s violence against women. Give Calendar Club a miss this year.
Playboy merch stockists
Not just a porn mag, Playboy remains a major brand of the global pornography industry. Founder Hugh Hefner – who was accused of drugging, raping and filming many women – was instrumental in creating today’s porn industry by mainstreaming the sexual trade in women’s bodies and turning porn into big business.
Playboy sexually exploits and objectifies not only women, but little girls too. Its publications have published nude and pornographic images of girls as young as ten for men’s sexual gratification, as well as a number of cartoons that portrayed girls as desiring and enjoying child sexual abuse.
Playboy’s parent company PLBY Group has scrambled to distance the company from its predatory and anti-woman origins and rebrand its objectification of women as progressive. But the corporate continues to trade from its porn magazine roots and in women’s objectified bodies.
The brand has launched its own version of OnlyFans, The Playboy Club. It continues to prey on and groom children with Playboy Kids stores and selling its products in stores for young people. This year we caught Playboy and its collaborator PSD Underwear using underage Instagram “influencers” (girls) to flog its porn branded merch on social media.
Below is a list of retailers stocking Playboy products. These companies have chosen to align with a notorious brand built on the sexual exploitation of women and girls. Send a message to these stores by refusing to financially support retailers propping up this porn brand which has harmed women and girls for decades. Read more.
Shopping centres
We know it’s not easy, but if you can possibly avoid them, stay away from major shopping centres which continue to host Honey Birdette’s giant porn-themed ads, facilitating kids’ exposure to porn and BDSM-themed imagery – including this year’s “Merry Kinkmas” campaign.
We’ve called on CEOs to take action for years – and almost 80,000 of you have signed dad Kenneth Thor’s petition. Some property group CEOs love to tell us they are a ‘Male Champion of Change’, pledging to fight sexism while at the same time profiting from hosting sexist and sexually violent imagery of women in their own centres. Where possible, consider alternatives to the big shopping centres, and boycott the children’s activities until they start demonstrating they care for their community.
Where can I shop?
If you’re looking for some ethical alternatives where you can shop with a clear conscience, start with the companies that have signed our Corporate pledge not to objectify women and sexualise girls.
If you’d like to sign up to our CSR pledge, get in touch with us here.
Do you know of other companies doing the right thing? Let us know!
From all of us at Collective Shout – at the end of a record-breaking year of victories – we are so grateful for your ongoing support and wish you a safe and happy Christmas and New Year. We look forward to more victories with your help next year!
See also:
Our past Crossed Off lists
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