Honey Birdette founder Eloise Monaghan mounts global campaign to combat censorship
The former Brisbane-based boss of a major lingerie label is used to people complaining about her raunchy advertising. So now she’s fighting back in a global way.
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The female boss of a lingerie company founded in Brisbane has launched a global petition to fight critics tightening controls on lingerie advertising.
The petition - which has had 14,000 signatures since it launched last night, says regulators are listening to groups who have accused Honey Birdette’s advertising of being too provocative, pornographic and to blame for violence against women.
“This has to stop! Why are we teaching young girls and women to be ashamed of their bodies? What is the difference between a male and a female nipple?” Honey Birdette founder Eloise Monaghan wrote.
HONEY BIRDETTE REPORTED TO ADVERTISING WATCHDOG
“What next? If you care about women’s rights, want to live in a country not governed by the anti-abortion, anti-sex and anti-women groups then please sign, share and forward.”
Ms Monaghan said her critics were attacking her brand under the banner of feminism when their message is anti-feminist.
“It’s hard, because we just want to promote our product. But I thought it was time to have the argument. How can male nipples be on display and females not?”
“These guys are getting away with saying vicious things and I’m just not going to allow it, particularly when it’s directed at our customers and our Honeys and myself personally as a gay woman.”
Honey Birdette’s Red Alert campaign features a woman in lingerie with censorship banners across the images.
It also comes with the hashtag #notaskingforit.
“I didn’t even come up with that, but I emailed my team last week because it always hits retail - they’ll be in there going at our Honeys,” she said.
“They were all coming back with the hashtag notaskingforit so I thought there we go, let’s go with that.”
She contacted her staff in regional towns and cities across Australia, the US and the UK to tell them about the petition, and was swamped with messages of support.
“Over the past week we have learnt of some very worrying advertising bans being formulated by the regulators regarding and specifically targeting women and Honey Birdette. This is coming from the highest levels of government and we plan to fight the hell out of it,” she wrote.
“Our new campaign launches today. There will be nipples. And plenty of them. Just as you’ll find in male advertising of any topless kind. If you feel that women in lingerie should not be censored, nor be linked to consent, then please sign the petition on our website and spread the word by sharing it with your network.”
Despite the complaints that follow the release of a new collection, Ms Monaghan said the attacks are not affecting sales.
“It actually goes the other way when this happens. We’ve got a fairly obsessed cult customer,” she said.
“We just want to keep highlighting that it’s become acceptable - women can’t display their nipples on social media but men can. No-one’s talking about it and it’s not even in our thought process.”
Ms Monaghan also denied the censorship petition was a marketing exercise.
“I’m not that planned a person. I’m fuming and my blood is boiling,” she said.
“The focus was meant to be on lingerie but I’m willing to have the fight,” she said.
“We’re under that much scrutiny now, and it’s like what, because we’ve got two girls in a campaign? Are you serious?”
Honey Birdette’s petition is critical of feminist group Collective Shout who Ms Monaghan said had targeted her brand for the last decade.
“They are attempting to change the definition of what is acceptable in lingerie advertising to include almost any image, implying that it could be interpreted as sexual and therefore causes violence against women,” Ms Monaghan said.
“I certainly won’t let conservative fringe groups blame women’s bodies for domestic violence and we are gearing up to create a movement with contemporary women and men around the world.”
Collective Shout co-founder Melinda Tankard Reist said the group welcomed Honey Birdette’s censorship campaign because it showed the group was having an impact.
She pointed to a petition with 70,000 signatures calling on the property groups that lease to Honey Birdette to take action.
“We’ve also been able to point out that Honey Birdette has been in breach of multiple Ad Standards rulings,” she said.
“Our objection is the wall to wall porn-inspired imagery of women. We have had reports of boys standing out the front of the windows saying ‘I’d like to f**k that’ filming them.”
She said global research showed that objectified portrayals of women are harmful to women and girls, and that they lead to the viewer having a diminished view of women.
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“This is not as they’re trying to portray it about the individual right of women to wear lingerie. And we’re not saying that women who dress like that are asking for anything,” Ms Tankard Reist said.
“Why should the vested interest of companies operating for profit come before the welfare of the community and our rights to be free from hypersexualised imagery in a public space?”
“They can sell whatever the hell they want. But if these images were shown in any other workplace, they would be deemed in breach of our sexual harassment laws. Why the double standards?”
Find the petition against Honey Birdette’s shopping centre advertising here
And you can find Honey Birdette’s censorship petition here
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