France: Wake up and smell the statistics

A new campaign from Lejaby Lingerie stirred the French a little too much it seems, the Guardian smells an end of sexist advertising in France.

The campaign - which you can view in all its glory if you click read more - shows left lovers sniffing the lingerie from their former girls with the headline that reads "Remember me".

The Guardian reports that french feminists have seen a lot worse that this, Audi once ran an ad with the headline: "He has the money, he has the car and he'll have the woman"

Lejabys website says the campaign "speaks about sensuality without showing naked women, abandons porno-chic stereotypes and demeaning attitudes for women, drops the concept of woman as sex object, and appeals to the senses and especially to feelings ...It reflects the playful approach of the love affairs of modern men and women"

Nonetheless, the French industry's self-regulatory watchdog, the Association of Advertisers for Responsible Advertising, ruled that the posters breached the business's recently toughened guidelines, which ban images that are "an affront to human dignity and decency".

After the outcry over the Sloggi poledancing ad last year the French are a bit fed up with ads that are in bad taste, they don't object to nudity but to "violence, submission, routine humiliation, the kind of campaign that embodies and transmits an image of the woman as object" according to a report made last year. The same report noted that 48% of the French population were 'often upset' by the way women were presented in advertising campaigns, and 70% thought images were more degrading today than five years ago - a whopping 69% of the males and females in the survey would like an opportunity to protest about them.

Without further ado, here is the campaign that made that might make the French adpeople wake up and smell the coffee. They managed to upset people without showing any half-naked women at all! Kudos! I've tried my darndest but I can't be offended by these. Your milage may vary.

As an aside, remember when "campaign" meant three (or more) posters on the same proposition and not three variations of the same visual? Ah, those were the days aye?

Hat tip to deep.ed