Rivers nailed for seeing dead women as new advertising opportunity
From Melinda Tankard Reist's blog
The Age has covered our protest against Rivers for appropriating the image of a dead woman in fishnet stockings and stilettos on the front of a catalogue headed "10 deadly deals" as described on the Collective Shout website and here. I was amused to see River's spokesman describe our interpretation of the catalogue cover as "weird and draconian".
So if we weren't meant to interpret the woman as being dead - murdered even - why the heading "10 deadly deals"? Is she merely under the couch searching for her missing purse? The damn remote? Or playing hide-and-seek badly? If she tripped and fell wouldn't the heading be '10 clumsy deals'? If we've got it so wrong, why doesn't Rivers tell us what they meant to convey with the image and wording?Here's Michelle Griffin's piece which also mentions some of our other actions against eroticised violence against women in advertising. We can't be blasé about this trivialisation of violence against women.