Free from ‘toxic chemicals.’ Not free from toxic messages

Last week, 15 girls aged 14-16, and involved with Fusion Mornington Peninsula’s Real Girls program, took on Australian make-up and skincare brand Frank Body over its lip and cheek ‘Send Nudes’ product.

Mad Pizza E Bar don’t have the best marketing. That’s the simplest way to put it. Largely because their approach to getting people through the door looks closer to porn than pizza. From the naked women on the walls of their establishment to the close ups of breasts on their menus to the soft-core posts plastered all over their Facebook page, they don’t seem to spend much time focusing on their product – it’s all about the women posing around it.

So what’s the problem? What’s wrong with using sexualised images in place of a marketing strategy? There’s a bunch of things.

In late 2015, model Gisele Bündchen starred in an advertising campaign for Stuart Weitzman, a luxury American footwear brand. In one shot for the campaign, Bündchen reclines in a white shirt, its buttons undone to the middle of her chest and her legs bare; in another she squats, topless, in black slacks. Her body becomes the salient point of each of the black and white images, with Weitzman’s shoes reduced to monochromatic props for Bündchen’s prone body in its various states of undress. 

Nancy Sinatra once famously said that boots were made for walking but shoe brand Windsor Smith’s advertisements have instead raised concern amongst consumers. These ads specialise in the sexual objectification of women and sexual violence against women.