Win - Women are not products for consumption: Pickle My Chili breaches ad ethics code

Ad Standards upholds complaints against sexist ads

If you thought that by the year 2024 we would have moved past using women’s objectified bodies to sell unrelated products, you would be mistaken!

We were recently alerted to a Victorian hot sauce brand, Pickle My Chili, doing just that.

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Supporter Em told us:

I came across Pickle My Chilli in a small rural general store and was horrified by their product packaging. The hot sauce labels flaunt sexualised figures of women (and men) and the product descriptions draw parallels between women and the hot sauces (a product to be consumed). I contacted the business owner directly and also lodged a complaint with Ad Standards which was upheld for the ads being exploitative and degrading.

Stripping women of their humanity

The labels on the sauce bottles feature objectified depictions of women’s headless bodies, with partially exposed breasts and buttocks, or brandishing a whip.

Portraying a woman without a head or face is one of the most common forms of objectification. It serves to strip her of her humanity by reducing her to nothing more than a sexualised body.

The Headless Woman in Hollywood Project explains how this method of objectifying women harms women:

By decapitating the woman, or fragmenting her body into decontextualised sexual parts, she becomes an unquestionably passive object to the male gaze. The question of her consent is removed completely alongside her head, and her purpose becomes solely that of being looked at by men obediently. Her value is that only of her sexual appeal to men, and not of her personhood.

Women reduced to products to be consumed

The company’s hot sauce flavours are given female names, reducing women to literal 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.

One image features a woman holding a bottle of hot sauce and the following caption:

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Hi, I'm Julia. Here to titillate and invigorate your tongue. Find me in garlic and oregano or lemon and bay. I can penetrate the fattest of chicken thighs and pair perfectly in a baked ricotta. I'm full bodied and intense, perfect for all your culinary needs.

Another depicts a headless woman:

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Hi, I'm Vanessa 💁‍♀️🌶️⁠

The headless Goddess of chili pepper.

Here to entice you with my killer thighs and lucious hips. I'm so irresistable, even the Pope can't get me off his lips... 😉

Treating women as commodities to be bought and sold, or as stand-ins for literal objects, are text book examples of sexual objectification. Dr Caroline Heldman, an expert in sexual objectification, uses the CHIPS test to identify sexual objectification:

1) Commodity: Does the image show a sexualised person as a commodity, for example, as something that can be bought and sold?

2) Harmed: Does the image show a sexualised person being harmed, for example, being violated or unable to give consent?

3) Interchangeable: Does the image show a sexualised person as interchangeable, for example, a collection of similar bodies?

4) Parts: Does the image show a sexualised person as body parts, for example, a human reduced to breasts or buttocks?

5) Stand-In: Does the image present a sexualised person as a stand-in for an object, for example, a human body used as a chair or a table?

“Dehumanising”: Ad Standards upholds complaints

Ad Standards reviewed and upheld complaints against the previous ads, noting that the images “draw a direct comparison between women and products to be consumed”, and that depicting a woman without a head is dehumanising and further objectifies her.

Pickle My Chili defended the sexist ads:

In both ads the girls appear relaxed and comfortable, they are appropriately dressed. The script is funny and relevant to the product.

While it’s quite a reach to claim a woman without a head appears “relaxed and comfortable”, we’re not seeing the humour in portraying women as a product. Call us old-fashioned, but we don’t think sexism is funny or clever. It's regressive.

In response to Ad Standards’ ruling, the company modified the caption on one image on Instagram. The original pictures and captions remain on their Facebook page.

Take Action

Let Pickle My Chili know what you think - tell them that sexism doesn't sell. 

Email them at [email protected]

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See also:

What do you mean by 'objectification'?

What would advertising look like without objectification?

Headless women: Corporates who profit from dehumanisation


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  • Caitlin Roper
    published this page in News 2024-06-12 19:36:59 +1000

You can defend their right to childhood

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