the daily snivel

Hello BCE Communications and Customer Care,

I am deeply shocked and offended by Bell Sympatico's recent print advertisement depicting a grade-school-anatomy-like picture of a woman with all pictorial references to the female reproductive system (breast and pelvic regions) cut out. The advertisement includes the caption"You'll do anything to protect your kids from inappropriate content. So will we."

The picture is reminiscent of the sort of diagram that young people would be shown during sexual health education classes and depicts the circulatory system and bone and muscle structure under "transparent" skin. Aside from the aforementioned cut-out regions on the female figure, there are six small surrounding illustrations labelled Liver, Heart, Uterus, Brain, Ovary, Kidney. The picture of the uterus and ovary have been cut out as well.

The reason this ad is so deeply offensive is its strong misogynistic tone in proposing to parents and children that the female body is an inappropriate thing, in and of itself, which must be censored and against which children must be protected. In the advertisement, the female body is depicted in a clinical drawing of the type used to educate children in schools; a nondescript female form with its arms at its side. Similar drawings may be seen in a pediatrician or family doctor's office.

While there are many expected, out-dated, misogynistic depictions of women that could equally have been quite unfairly paired with the discriminatory term "inappropriate," (such as a woman in revealing clothing, a strong successful woman in business attire, a woman in the scientific professions, etc...), the use of such a clinical figure is the very thing that makes the ad so particularly offensive and surprising.

The ad suggests that the figure represented is inappropriate because it has female reproductive parts. The figure in the ad is not engaging in any behaviour that could possibly be considered inappropriate / sexually explicit. It is simply standing. It is not performing any indecent act. It would be difficult to successfully argue that the ad is meant to suggest that the figure is inappropriate simply because it is nude, and not because it is female, and therefore not misogynistic and discriminatory. Note that it is only a female figure which appears in the ad; how could this not have been a conscious decision in designing this ad? Why not a male figure alongside it with his breast and pelvic regions cut out as well?

...