Saturday 7 March 2015

The Salvation Army Anti-VAW Ad

OK, everybody has seen this, right?


All over the Internet, feminists (some self-identified, others I'm assuming) are bitching about it.

The ad comes from South Africa. Why is the woman white?

The woman is white. Other groups also experience VAW.

The blood and bruises are fake. (I don't know what this is meant to criticize. The photographer should have engaged in a little cinéma vérité and beaten the model up? The DRESS should have been taken to an emergency ward and shopped around until someone agreed to pose in it?)

VAW is not just physical. Why doesn't this photo expose other forms?

There are no trigger warnings. (Um, ?)

The ad is decontextualized. (Frankly, I don't understand this one. What does that mean?)

And a bunch of other stuff I don't understand because I am a bad feminist.

Here's the one I can get behind: It's the fucking Salvation Army.

Yes, it's the poverty-wage paying, homophobic, transphobic, everythingphobic Salvation Army.

Who had this time-sensitive, arresting image offered to them by an ad agency looking to do some pro-bono work and who knew -- and this is the only positive thing I will ever say about SA -- the SA has a history of going with edgy advertising.

The kind that agencies LOVE to do. The kind that wins awards. The kind that gets people talking.

Just like this one did.

People are talking. And that's good.

The ad is clever. I think it's great.

And that makes me a bad feminist.

Fine.

1 comment:

e.a.f. said...

oh, well there are a lot of us "BAD FEMINISTS", some of us are referred to as "old feminists" also. its o.k.

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