Earlier this week, we reported that Junee Licorice and Chocolate Factory was selling sexist "Bottle of Boobs", a container of chocolates in the shape of women's disembodied breasts. 
After initially defending the product, claiming a portion of the profits from the Bottle of Boobs was donated to breast cancer charity, we are pleased to announce the company has now pulled the product.
Our campaign was featured in a story on news.com.au:
Collective Shout spokeswoman Caitlin Roper told NCA NewsWire the chocolatier had reduced women to sexualised parts “for literal consumption”.
“This is an example of everyday sexism and the casual dehumanisation of women,” she said.
“It’s not about offence … it’s about the known, established harms of objectifying women.”
Ms Roper said sexualising breasts to raise awareness about cancer only served to trivialise the issue and reduced women’s worth to having perky breasts, rather than it being about saving women’s lives.
She further noted there were many breast cancer survivors who had endured mastectomies.
“So that is quite a slap in the face,” she said.
Collective Shout supporters have used social media to weigh in on the debate, expressing outrage towards the chocolatier.
Melinda Liszewski wrote: “These companies use breast cancer charities as a way to boost ‘awareness’ of their brand, not the other way around as they claim. This is self evident – if they cared about women’s lives they would not sexually objectify us.”
Renee Chopping posted: “Junee Licorice and Chocolate Factory have demonstrated a refusal to see this for what it is – appropriating women’s body parts for $$$. Just because a portion of the profits are being donated doesn’t make this OK.”
Breast cancer survivors also welcomed Junee Licorice and Chocolate Factory’s decision to pull ‘Bottle of Boobs’ product from sale. Among those condemning it were breast cancer survivors including Angela Jones.
Angela said she and other survivors she knew were pleased to learn the company had today withdrawn its “Bottle of Boobs".
“There is nothing funny or sexy about breast cancer,” Angela said. “When I first saw the product I thought – that’s a bachelor party or brothel pillow treat not a breast cancer awareness fundraiser.”
Angela said she had searched the company’s site and social media pages and could find nothing about money from sales of the disembodied chocolate breasts being donated to breast cancer charities. But even if this was the case, it made no difference to her.
“Survivors like me are sick of seeing perky and intact representations of breasts sold under the guise of breast cancer fundraising. It’s always porn breasts, never real breasts. There are so many other ways they could have raised money for breast cancer prevention and treatment. They didn’t need to create the ‘Bottle of Boobs’ to achieve that. Any of their other quality products could have been used for the same good purpose,” Angela said.
“I thank the company for listening to the criticism and deciding to withdraw this product.”
See also:
Junee Licorice and Chocolate selling sexist "Bottle of Boobs"
Add your comment