Stop the mutilation of women’s bodies for profit!

If you missed ABC Four Corners searing expose of Australia’s cosmetic surgery industry and its callous disregard for the health and wellbeing of women, you really should take a look.

You will see how the cosmetic surgery industry preys on the body angst of vulnerable women and girls to get them to conform to harmful constructions of ‘beauty’ for profit. And the physical and mental injury to some of the brave victims who have come forward to tell their stories. Seeing healthy flesh being cut into, seeing deformed ‘enhanced’ breasts, seeing gigantic swollen backsides, and women’s bodies covered in bruises, was at times, like being witness to a crime scene.  It’s time these barbarians were reigned in. And it’s time we overturned the dictats of a global beauty industry – aided and abetted by its celebrity handmaidens which lies to women about what beauty should look like. Reflecting on the program afterwards, I realized just how much I love looking into the unadulterated, natural faces of women and girls who have refused to succumb to false messages about how they should look and be in the world.

Beauty’s New Normal – Four Corners

SONY has blocked the Western release of an 'adult role-playing game' that saw the player undress schoolgirls and fondle their breasts while on a quest for the holy grail.

The Video Standards Council (VSC) objected to its "setting within a 'school' environment”, saying it "clearly promotes the sexualisation of children via the sexual interaction between the game player and the female characters."

Collective Shout has campaigned for the end of the sexualisation of girls in pop culture, the media and mainstream marketing over the past decade. For instance, in 2016,6 Amazon was marketing a ‘Sexy Nurse Toddler T-Shirt', where the shirt had drawn in a fake cleavage, available in sizes for 2-6-year-old girls. Just recently, Collective Shout helped to remove child sex dolls from Amazon’s website. For a long time, Amazon has contributed to a culture of sexual abuse by allowing the sale of novels that normalises paedophilia. The sale of such dolls and similar material has earned Amazon a spot on the NCOSE's Dirty Dozen List for the past two years.

Researchers have found a direct link between seeing girls as sex objects and showing aggression towards them in teenage boys.

Boys who agreed strongly with statements such as "girls are only good for their body", "it's OK to treat girls as objects" or "girls are only used for pleasure" were more likely to be aggressive towards girls – but only if they were not members of a gang, according to a study published in the journal Psychology, Crime and Law.

We were recently contacted by a mother who was concerned about some games her daughter found online. The games featured characters from Frozen as being pregnant - in this case 'Elsa' - and the object of the game is to assist the character in giving birth. 

On further investigation, the girls website includes a number of games depicting licensed characters as pregnant. The object of different games varies, some guide the gamer through assisting birth, including caesarean section. Others, such as 'Pregnant Rapunzel Ambulance" feature the character pregnant, with a black eye, a gash to her chest and tears streaming down her face. The gamer is required to patch up her wounds. As the mother who contacted us said "she looks like a victim of domestic violence."

Aside from the inexplicable number of pregnant licensed characters, the site features games depicting cosmetic surgery.

Grand Theft Auto 5 fuelling the epidemic of violence against women, say survivors in petition signed by over 40,000 people.

[UPDATE] Target and Kmart have pulled the game from sale, will Big W do the same?