Women won’t fall for this guff
WONDERBRA’S “Hello Boys” advert was so sexist it was almost a parody. Billboards up and down the country featured a semi-naked supermodel, smiling coyly as she displayed her pneumatic breasts.
Clearly, she was advertising a bra but particularly lecherous men could well have imagined that the breasts themselves were being marketed.
That form of advertising, seen everywhere before feminism emerged, was on its way out by the time this one popped up. But now, almost 25 years later, the repackaged billboards are back.
Probably to avoid feminists like me making complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority we are being fed the guff that the new slogan is about targeting “empowered, liberated women”. But in this MeToo# era in which women are speaking out about harassment and abuse, it looks a bit of an own goal for Wonderbra to bring back an advertisement that would today go down as well as a date with Harvey Weinstein.
The idea that women will be fooled by this cynical branding is ridiculous. This “new sexism” is no different from the old sexism.
Advertisers need to realise women are far from stupid.