MisRepresentation Holiday Shopping Campaign

Posted Monday 19 Dec 2011

Finally, a refreshing antidote to the overload of Christmas shopping advertisements clamouring for your attention. Or, at least, a way of making your point to those advertisers using ads which are sexist and degrading to women.
Two weeks ago Jennifer Siebel Newsom and the MisRepresentation team launched a campaign to get help in calling out sexist and degrading advertisements and products during the holiday shopping season. With the hashtag #NotBuyingIt on Twitter, Facebook, and through e-mail, thousands of people have been tracking the way women and girls are constantly misrepresented on billboards, in commercials, in magazines, and in stores.

Alex: "if your product was any good, you wouldn't need #sexism to sell it. #NotBuyingIt"
Mary Lu: "The Real Housewives of (fill in the blank). We are #NotBuyingIt @RepresentPledge"

Cullie P: "One company that never fails to degrade women, both its owner and its ads is American Apparel, I'm never buying it. I walk by American Apparels all the time and I see a topless woman only wearing jeans, with her butt sticking out. What are they selling exactly?"
Rosemary C: "Pretty much all Kay and Jared jewelry commercials bother me. The message they send out seems to be that if a man doesn't buy his wife/girlfriend jewelry, he messed up big time. Not every woman wants jewelry as a gift."

Check out this page for more of the called-out products, and read the blog at MissRep.org for further information on how you can join others in changing your consumer habits this holiday season.