Sexists are easy to beat – just click and correct!
LAST week Tessa Jowell said that if she became London Mayor she’d ban sexist advertising on the Tube – like that poster of a busty, tiny-waisted bikini beauty with the slogan: ‘Are you beach body ready?’
It’s nice for Tessa to care so about general female morale on the commute. But I fear her concern is misplaced.
As it happens, I’m about to tweet about a different poster that I spotted on the Central Line, designed to encourage parents to give young girls the HPV vaccine to protect against cervical cancer. It says ‘You can’t stop your daughter growing up’ in lurid pink writing next to pink fluffy booties, pink Start Rites, pink Converse sneakers, and finally, pink stilettos. I want to reignite debate about the cultural pinkification of the female sex, leading to a rethink for the campaign – or at the very least, a change of colour on the hideous posters.
And that’s just about all it takes these days, Tessa. Glamour magazine was quick to take down a ‘listicle’ of tips for women to make men love them, such as ‘make him a snack after sex – milk and cookies will do’, or ‘hand him a cold one out of the shower’, and my personal favourite, ‘open the door naked’.
THE feature was met with hoots of derision and one Twitter user wondered: ‘ Is Glamour’s “13 Little Things That Can Make Men Fall Hard For You” the worst thing ever written?’
Also last week, Bic, a disposable pen manufacturer – yes, the one that came up with pink pens ‘for her’, a product that comediennes Ellen DeGeneres and Bridget Christie both found worthy of extended mockery, with Christie even naming her show ‘A Bic For Her’ in tribute – was shamed into spiking another moronic ad within hours of its release. This was one designed to celebrate Women’s Day in South Africa. It pictured a pretty African woman in her 30s with straightened hair, smiling at the slogan: ‘Look like a girl. Act like a lady. Think like a man. Work like a boss.’ No, this was not a spoof.
It would take a lifetime for us to parse each hilarious line for shattering awfulness but again, why waste precious time? What’s so lovely about the internet is that the angry mob rushes in so fast that whatever legislators like Jowell say or do, they’re already late to the party.
The ad will start trending, everyone will post digitally altered versions of any images for LOLZ, something will become a global meme, and you can bet that Caroline Criado-Perez, the campaigner trolled for wanting a woman on the £5 note, will be on it. For the Bic pen professional foul she tweeted: ‘What fresh hell is this? *stabs out eyes with Bic pen*.’
Meanwhile, the poor company or person in question will have gone into rapid damagelimitation mode, apologised, retracted, deleted, and insisted the insulting words/images were meant to be ‘empowering’ for women, but by the time that happens the caravan is moving on and nobody cares any more.
So Tessa and co: don’t bother with a sledgehammer ban over these nutty sexist ads. That’s so old-school. It’s much more effective to let Twitter’s activists take care of business. All politicians need to do is – and this applies to most things, these days – is fetch popcorn and sit back as the sweet nature of social media takes its inevitable course.