Bondage: Backlash and Bend Over

Gender equality has become a relatively mainstream concept, so it seems strange that 50 Shades of Grey has received so much commercial success. The erotic novel, containing strong themes of female submission, has become the best-selling book in Britain since records began.

Written by a woman, with a female dominated audience, 50 Shades of Grey has been described as “mummy porn” containing steamy sex scenes involving taboo subjects such as bondage. The book details an innocent virgin dominated by her high powered boyfriend. Female commentators have branded it a victory for female empowerment. Their argument often goes as follows: the novel encourages women to take charge of their sexuality; the theme of female submission plays out within sexual fantasies which are just that – fantasies rather than reality; just because a woman enjoys being dominated in the bedroom, does not mean she rejects power in other aspects of life. Popular feminist blogger Maya suggests, “…[if] gender equality allows for greater and deeper trust between men and women, then maybe we’re destined to get kinkier and kinkier… I am fully in support of anyone doing whatever (safe, consensual) thing that wants (sic) to do to get themselves off. Feminists for orgasms.”

If 50 Shades of Grey fails to offend ideals of gender equality, then surely the same would apply for women appearing in other aspects of the media - at least those with no intention of portraying females in a derogatory manner. However, Lush’s PR stunt about animal testing (see video right) earlier this year was heavily criticised for its so called use of bondage when animal torture techniques were performed on 24 year old Jacqueline Traide in the shop window of the beauty brand's Regent Street store.

(To make a disclosure: the person who organised the Lush campaign - Tamsin Omond -  used to work in Parker, Wayne & Kent’s offices for a pro bono client, although she was not directly employed by us.)

Executed in April, one blogger commented on the campaign, “Women aren't marketing tools. Rape is not a gimmick." [It now seems that that blog has been deleted.] Blogger Another Angry Woman wrote; “Lush have used violence against women to promote their own products. This is never acceptable and ultimately serves to perpetuate the context in which this occurs.” Laura Woodhouse from The F Word blog wrote, “We desperately need to draw attention to violence against women, not use violence against women to draw attention to other issues...In this context, Lush's actions are crass, insensitive and actually damage many of the people who care about the issues they are trying to raise.”  The criticism got to a scale where Omond felt compelled to use a column on Guardian.co.uk to defend the campaign from its critics.

The defence seemed to fall on deaf ears. Anna Breslaw from Jezebel.com – the site billed as “gossip, culture, fashion, and sex for the contemporary chick” –  wrote of the campaign and the follow up statement: “If…a certain sort of man will be masturbating to it later, does its self-awareness negate the fact that it's perpetuating the same sort of titillation”.

This stunt involved a female being subject to imprisonment and torture at the hands of a man. But, Lush’s campaign was not about sex. Or for that matter about highlighting women’s issues. It was about animal testing. It used a conceptually very simple mechanic to convey to members of the public the horrors of animal testing by aiming to arouse empathy with animals. The most efficient way to arouse feelings of empathy amongst an audience is to use human beings as the subject  - as an audience can relate to the subject easily. It’s a mechanic used by pretty much every pressure group, theatrical production, book or film.

The scrutiny directed at Lush for supposedly grabbing male attention and downplaying women’s issues seems unwarranted. Putting aside the fact that Lush has very little interest in marketing to men – their products are made for women – if the stunt was to titillate men, as alleged on Jezebel.com, upper / top shelf men’s magazines like FHM, Zoo and Nuts would surely have covered the PR stunt for their audience of groin grabbers as it’d be free content for the magazines to use. Sales of 50 Shades of Grey suggest that if bondage was going to tickle anyone’s fancy, it seems to appeal to women rather than men.

Much of the online criticism the Lush campaign received challenged the use of a female subject in the stunt. From a PR perspective the answer to this is simple: to draw attention to your campaign, whether ethical or not, you will be more likely to get coverage if you use images of women than if you use images of men. Open any newspaper, magazine or visit a website to find out whether that’s true or not.

It is interesting to consider whether public reaction would differ if a male test subject was used. In this instance, would the campaign still have been criticized for supposedly having sexual connotations? Probably yes, as it arouses 1980s concepts of Miss Whiplash and her clientele of MPs. The public reaction would also differ. The stunt would probably be downplayed as tongue-in-cheek. Surely subjugation and torture of any human being – regardless of their gender – should arouse disgust.

But possibly the motives behind the selection of the performance artist for the stunt are being over-intellectualised. The artist in question, Ms Traide, was known to the stunt organiser, Ms Omond. In this economy, it could be fair to say that paid work for performance art is pretty hard to come by. There could be a pretty basic fact being over-looked here. Ms Omond was in a position to give her mate a gig. Not such a bad decision to choose someone for a PR stunt, is it?

By sowing the seeds of public debate, Lush did indeed reap the benefits of the public’s attention. Unfortunately, however, this stunt was undeniably brand damaging. Then again, it was always going to be – and Lush would have known that. Associating a horrific image such as animal testing with a commercial product, service or brand is going create associations with a brand that are ugly, even when the brand is actually campaigning against such horror. Lush have built a great high street business, and as such they aren’t ignorant marketers. That the company persisted with the stunt is a truly commendable decision.

Criticism with similar sentiments has been levied at another campaign with ethical messages: American Apparel’s search for XLent models. “Plus-sized” customers were invited to e-mail self portraits to the company to win the opportunity of modelling for their new XL clothing range. Unlike a similar UK campaign, Dove’s “Real Women” Campaign, American Apparel were not lauded for promoting women of all shapes and sizes, but instead slated for having no respect for larger ladies. Nancy Upton, who won the competition, actually sent in her photographs to mock the campaign. She produced a series of humorous images including one where she slathers a pie across her face and another where she stuffs chicken in her mouth in a swimming pool. With no intention of modelling for the company, Upton said, “Companies don’t do enough research or even talk to enough plus-size women to know that these are strong, confident women. We don’t need to coddle them. We don’t needto talk down to them. We can talk to them like other people.”

Despite the fact American Apparel and Lush were campaigning for wildly different causes, they both received a hefty backlash from commentators on women’s issues. Which raises questions how 50 Shades of Grey, another commercial product with very apparent themes of violence against women is attracting acclaim. Perhaps campaigners distinguish the novel as a form of art rather than what it truly is; a business. Perhaps it’s an admission of self-defeat, that the intense buzz surrounding 50 Shades of Grey – the first commercially successful, female orientated, bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism book (there’s an initialism, apparently, which is “BDSM”, but that was found by researching this issue, not that we’re “into” that stuff) – would surely overshadow criticism of the book’s glamorisation of women being hurt.

It could be that campaigners criticize established brands to obtain the most publicity for their own cause. According to a survey recently conducted by international consultancy agency, SIGWATCH, the most scrutinized companies are not the ones with the worst intentions, they are merely the ones with the profile to boost publicity for the issue campaigner’s cause.

Any brand taking forays into ethical campaigning places itself as a target for criticism. In marketing for a more perfect world, imperfections become apparent. It’s easy to criticise such campaigns, because nobody’s perfect. Campaigning organisations themselves aren’t perfect, and if they have such an arrogance, they themselves must be questioned.

When commercial entities make moves into ethical campaigning, they need to be supported – particularly by campaigning organisations. This will encourage more brands to act more ethically. If their first attempt is feeble, they need constructive criticism to tell them how to be better, not destructive criticism that will dissuade them from ethical behaviour in the future.