Westfield Derby remove Jack & Jones ‘advertising’ – cause for celebration?

Cecilia Shandeva
WVoN co-editor

In a recent article on how objectification pervades our everyday lives,  WVoN co-editor Meg Kissack celebrated our success at getting pornographic advertising by Suit Supply removed from their store in London’s Westfield shopping centre.

However, to our amazement she mentioned that Suit Supply was running another appalling campaign which prompted some WVoN co-editors and readers to complain to Westfield yet again.

And again, the centre asked Suit Supply to remove the window display in the London store. (but sadly not the one inside the store – I walked past there last night).

Meg’s article prompted the following comment from one our readers who had visited another Westfield store in Derby, England:

Talking of Westfield’s attitude towards women, the one in Derby has a shop called Jack Jones which features a huge pornographic image of a woman in its window. It is a larger-than-life size cutout sticker of a young woman kneeling down with her knees apart and legs open, hands held behind her head to push out (rigid photoshopped) breasts which are already spilling out of a tiny bikini. This woman, in fact, but in a different pose – http://www.jackjones.com/

I also wrote a very direct email to Westfield on the Jack & Jones adverts and am pleased to say I  received the following reply from Westfield Derby:

“I have been forwarded your message below regarding the Jack & Jones advert at Westfield Derby by my colleague at Westfield London.

Retailers within our centres are responsible for their own advertising and in-store campaigns, which in most cases are rolled out nationally to all their stores. Westfield takes seriously the desire of our shoppers to have an enjoyable experience when they visit our centres and in the case of the recent Jack Jones campaign, Westfield has worked with the retailer and the images which may have caused offense have now been removed”.

Good, so they should be removed.  I appreciate Westfield’s response and the steps they’ve taken to work with the retailer in removing the posters. But they should never have been allowed up in the shopping centres in the first place.

We do not allow certain films/music videos to be broadcast before 9pm (except apparently when it’s Rihanna and Christine Aguilera), so why should we have to put up with porn in our shopping centres when we are going about our daily business?

Prior to writing to Westfield,  I checked out the Jack & Jones website to view the mentioned posters. I clicked in to the so called ‘Fitness Club’. Go right ahead, do the same.

No really do. Because I want men and women to see what level of porn is now being used to advertise men’s clothes. Even Jack & Jones’s online commercial clip is boarding on porn.

Why do retailers have to use semi naked women to sell men’s clothes?

This level of advertising will only stop when we (men and women) say enough is enough. It’s not only insulting to women, but to men too –  suggesting the only way to sell items to men is to use sex and naked women to do so.

Are we to believe there is no deeper substance to men than porn? The impact this type of advertising has on the perception of girls and women in society is that we are just sexual objects and that is very damaging for male/female relations.

Let’s start demanding a more intelligent, forward thinking, interactive and fun element to how we are sold products.

As for that old line ‘sex sells’  I think it’s time society refreshed its thinking and wake up – sex only sells if we unconciously buy in to it.