Recently, we discovered well-known and respected American family brand Walmart selling Playboy merchandise. Its e-commerce platform, walmart.com, has over 1000 listings for Playboy branded products including costumes, clothing, fragrances and jewelry.

Last week we called out QLD-based Orion Hotel for promoting their “Playboy Bunny Party” for Easter. The event, held annually for the past three years, invited individuals to dress as Playboy founder and pimp Hugh Hefner or as Playboy bunnies.

Grassroots campaigning movement Collective Shout: for a world free of sexploitation has released its annual ‘Crossed Off’ list.

First launched 15 years ago, the blacklist is a curated line-up of company offenders who have objectified women and sexualised girls to sell products and services through the year.
 
This list serves as a guide for consumers who wish to spend their Christmas shopping dollar ethically. 

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!

Family mall sex store racks up new violations for 'exploitative' and 'overtly sexual' ads

*Content warning (Note: These larger-than-life shop window ads were shown to children in family shopping centres across the country)

Honey Birdette was found in breach of advertising Code of Ethics nine times in a single month. It's a new record for the Playboy-owned and Westfield resident sex store chain.

Trinity Financial Advisors has dumped all Playboy shares following our call to divest from the pornography empire. The Ohio-based company first reported ownership of Playboy stock - 22k shares - in June 2024. 

We are pleased to learn that Playboy Clothing ANZ has shut down its website. The official distributor of licensed Playboy apparel for Australia and New Zealand previously supplied popular youth retailers including City Beach and Culture Kings with its porn branded merchandise.

The sex store can throw out words like “strength”, “confidence” and “autonomy” all they want (sounds like someone has been using a thesaurus!) but it doesn’t make them true

After two more porn-themed ads upheld by Ad Standards, sex store defends its objectification of women for profit

Ad Standards has upheld complaints against two more porn-themed ads by Playboy-owned sex store Honey Birdette, with complaints now upheld against more than 80 separate ads.

A local community member made a complaint to Ad Standards over two different ads at Lakeside Joondalup, one featuring a woman in sheer lingerie pulling down her bra strap, and the other featuring a woman in sheer lingerie reclining while pushing her breasts together. Read the case report here. 

Porn themed ads which present women as objects to an audience that includes children. We are battling a scourge of violence against women and sexual grooming of children. I object to this company contributing to a culture which normalises these harms in my community.

Spotlight fails to pull pimp costumes from stores - it's time to #BoycottSpotlight

More than a month ago, we called out crafts and fabric store Spotlight for selling pimp costumes.

Pimps control women and girls in commercial sexual exploitation, often through physical violence and abuse. They sell vulnerable women and girls to other men for paid sexual abuse and take a cut (or all) of their earnings.

While the company quietly removed the costumes from its online store, they continue sell them in stores - even during their Book Week promotion, alongside Harry Potter, Disney and Spiderman costumes. 

Recently, we discovered another US based investment firm with shares in global porn entity, Playboy. According to public financial records, Carson Wealth Management has been a Playboy shareholder since at least 2019.