Honey Birdette dismisses ‘ridiculous’ petition calling for Westfield to crack down on ‘porn-style’ advertising

MELBOURNE dad Kenneth Thor has accused Westfield of robbing children of their innocence by allowing this to continue.

A Honey Birdette store in the Myer Centre. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt/AAP

A MELBOURNE dad has called on Westfield to rein in Honey Birdette’s “porn-style” advertising posters, accusing the controversial lingerie chain of “robbing kids of their innocence”.

But Honey Birdette, which regularly makes headlines due to its racy advertising, has dismissed the latest complaint as part of an organised campaign involving a small number of religious conservatives.

A Change.org petition by 43-year-old engineer Kenneth Thor, addressed to joint Westfield chief executives Peter and Stephen Lowy, has attracted more than 7500 supporters.

In the petition, Mr Thor says he was visiting Westfield Fountain Gate in Melbourne’s southeastern suburbs for dinner with his children earlier this year when they walked past the Honey Birdette window.

“My heart sank as my four-year-old daughter suddenly shrieked, ‘Look! Why is she not wearing any clothes?’,” he wrote.

“Even worse, her shrieks caught the attention of my six-year-old son, who came running and together they stared and pointed at the porn-style images trying to make sense of them.”

Mr Thor, a supporter of activist group Collective Shout, told news.com.au he was “sad” because he “wasn’t ready to broach this sensitive topic of sexuality and why some people dress like that with my young children”.

“My kids were confused to see people exposing themselves, because we always brought them up [teaching] them that dressing decently is what they should do,” he said, adding you “don’t need to be religious to see there’s a bit of a disconnect between community standards and what Honey Birdette have been doing for the last 10 years”.

Honey Birdette managing director Eloise Monaghan slammed the petition. “To call this porn is absolutely ridiculous,” she said. “You see more skin on a beach or a David Beckham poster. You see more skin in a newsagency.”

Ms Monaghan said it was “the same group doing the same thing”, referring to Collective Shout. “Really the conservative nature of whoever’s running this is quite frightening,” she said.

“It’s ladies in lingerie. We sell lingerie. It’s very much about women embracing and empowering themselves in a very respectful way. We always photograph in briefs, suspenders, corsets or bras.

“We’ve spent the past 11 years making women feel beautiful and all this group does is attempt to make women feel ashamed of their bodies. Frightening given it’s 2017. I’ll keep empowering women.”

In August, the company was ordered to remove an ad deemed too racy by the Advertising Standards Board, which found the shot — in which the models’ nipples were visible — exposed minors to “inappropriate marketing” by using “highly sexual images”.

At the time, Ms Monaghan described the image as “beautiful” and argued the complaints were ridiculous. “Are they standing there with a magnifying glass looking for the nipple?” she said.

Honey Birdette, which earlier this year faced a boycott amid allegations of workplace bullying and a sexist work environment levelled by former staff, has 55 stores in Australia and is preparing to open its first US location in Los Angeles.

Mr Thor said he was calling for Westfield to introduce a “higher standard of vetting for the advertising in their own shopping centres”. “I’m hoping to [encourage] Westfield to put pressure on their tenants, because they have a duty of care to the patrons that visit their shopping centres,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Scentre Group said the company “strives to provide an environment which meets the needs of a many different shoppers and the broad retail offer available at its Westfield shopping centres is curated to meet these respective needs”.

“Honey Birdette was introduced to the Westfield portfolio in 2010 and is a popular retailer amongst various customer demographics, and is now in 23 Westfield shopping centres across Australia in addition to its numerous stores outside those centres,” she said.

“As with all its retail partners, Scentre Group has continued to work closely with Honey Birdette in the period it has operated in the Group’s portfolio, and it also implements a number of processes — on a case-by-case basis — which may address any customer concerns.

“Any customer feedback — positive and negative — that is received by Scentre Group is always shared with Honey Birdette stores.”

While Steven Lowy is on the board of Scentre Group, he and Peter Lowy are not involved with the operations of Westfield centres in Australia and New Zealand — they are co-CEOs of Westfield Corporation, which owns Westfield centres in the US, UK and Europe.

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Originally published as Honey Birdette dismisses ‘ridiculous’ petition calling for Westfield to crack down on ‘porn-style’ advertising