As published on Collective Shout

We recently spoke out about online clothing retailer “Cafepress” advertising vulgar, sexualised clothing for babies and children on its website. Onesies that were made available online included “I Love sluts”…”blow job instructor” and “No gag reflex.” We shared an image of just some of these products on Facebook. Thousands shared the image online and voiced their shock and disgust to friends. Many wrote to Cafepress pledging never to shop with them again.

Cafepress posted a response to the protest, both on its own Facebook page and in the comments section of the Collective Shout Facebook page.

It was encouraging to see Cafe Press’s stated intention to remove the products. However weeks after the protest, it appears that Cafepress hasn’t taken this issue seriously at all. “Sexual humor baby clothing” is still a category of clothing on the site with thousands of items listed.

An article about Cafepress published in WA Today featured comments from Justine O’Malley from child abuse prevention organisation Protective Behaviours WA:

“They’re really inappropriate sexualised messages,” she said.

“Of course the infant themselves can’t read it, but other children might be able to and adults can read them; so we’re putting children in a sexualised space.

“Sex and children; those two things just don’t go together.”

You can hear more from Justine O’Malley in an interview on 6PR882 radio. Listen here.

You might like to ask Cafepress why sexualised, hardcore and violating children’s clothes are still available on its website. Contact them through the website here and on Facebook here.

Collective Shout SA coordinator Nicole Jameson

Starts Saturday May 4, 12am – 12 midnight

As published on Collective Shout

As a non-profit movement, our friends at Gifted Hands have generously offered to support us by donating all online sales made tomorrow to us!

Gifted Hands sells environmentally friendly bags, scarves, jewellery and other items, supporting projects benefiting women and girls around the world.

Check out the online store here. If you like what you see and would like to support Collective Shout, here’s what you can do:

1. Tomorrow, visit www.giftedhands.com.au

2. Place an order anytime tomorrow and Collective Shout will receive 100% of the proceeds.

3. Share this article with your friends and networks and invite them to take part.

This is a great opportunity to purchase Mother’s Day gifts – but remember, the offer is only available Saturday, May 4, 12am until midnight! If you’re on Facebook, please join the event and share on your Facebook page too.

It is because of your support – both financial and through your activism – that Collective Shout has been able to achieve real change. We have seen sexploitative ad campaigns halted and p*rnified products withdrawn from sale. But the success is not only in the products that have been withdrawn. Because of your willingness to speak out, our sources tell us that corporates have been turning away products before they even hit the shelves.

There has been much progress but we still have a long way to go. Supporting this fundraising initiative is one way that you can help Collective Shout to build on the success we’ve already seen.

If you don’t want to purchase any products but would like to donate to Collective Shout directly, you can make a donation here:

www.collectiveshout.org/donate

We are so grateful for your support. Thanks for being part of the ‘Collective’ in Collective Shout.

I was interviewed by Leigh Hatcher for Open House on Sunday night. If you’re interested, here’s what we talked about. 

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Not buying it

Thanks to our friends at ‘The Illusionist’ for this blog post on Dove. With the deluge of lovey-dovey isn’t Dove wonderful guff all over the social media stratosphere, it was refreshing to read this piece which sums up all that is wrong with the so-called ‘Real Beauty’ campaign. So what if they make cool videos? Does that justify everything else the company does? Collective Shout has had Dove in its sights since our inception four years ago, and its parent company Unilever continues to appear on our annual ‘Cross ‘em off your XMAS list’

This week my inbox was flooded with emails from friends and acquaintances – who had forwarded me the link to the latest Dove “Real Beauty” video, highlighting the disconnect between women’s perceptions of their own attractiveness and how outsiders see them. The point of the video is to show that women are often too critical of their looks. I was glad to see how this video sparked important conversations in the blogosphere and social media. But there’s a dark side to Dove that many people are unaware of.

I had written a blog post about some problematic aspects of Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign back in October 2008. Recently, while researching material for my feature-length documentary, I came across more evidence that supported my earlier points. Thing is – I’ve been reluctant to speak up about these issues for several reasons. The key ones:

Dove’s campaigns are the only ones that – at least on the surface – promote positive body image, in an ocean of toxic advertising set to make women feel insecure about their looks

I am acquainted with several people connected to Dove’s Real Beauty campaign – they’re good-intentioned people I deeply respect and admire.

I actually really like Dove’s videos

So, I considered these issues and thought about the latest email I received from my friend S. I wondered, would she feel that same way if she knew the other side of the story? My hunch: probably not. Staying quiet would be the easy thing to do. But is it the right thing to do?

So, without further ado, I am addressing the big elephant in the room. Below you will find my original post about Dove – with some tweaks and updates reflecting new evidence I recently discovered.

About three months ago, upon completing the first phase of research for my film, I held two slideshow presentations in front of an audience of friends, acquaintances, and a few people working in the TV/movie industry in Paris. Very much in the style of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”

At the heart of the presentation is the assertion that the obsession over the pursuit of the perfect female body is one of the integral parts of the capitalist system. If women were suddenly content with their appearance – accepting their body size, skin tone, wrinkles, graying hair, and the size and shape of their breasts, amongst other things – entire industries would collapse. Indeed worldwide revenues for cosmetics, dieting products, and cosmetic surgery totaled almost 500 billion dollars in 2006. Thus the saturation of images in advertising and mass media promoting an idealized, surgically-enhanced beauty that is impossible to achieve.

Well, during my presentations I would invariably get asked about the company Dove and its campaign for “Real Beauty.” Wasn’t that refreshingly positive? People would ask. It is a question that comes up every time I talk about my project. The short answer? Yes and no.

The people at Dove have actually exploited a void in the marketplace. By introducing so-called women with “real” bodies, they distinguished themselves from their competitors. According to the New Yorker, after the introduction of their “Real Beauty” campaign, Dove’s sales shot up 700% in the U.K. Read more here.

And what about this, also brought to you by Unilever? 

Meaningless Platitudes

Germaine Greer has some great things to say on this in an article reprinted in this blog post: ‘Do we repeat meaningless platitudes about beauty or honour women for their achievements?’  

Perfectly captured in this tweet! 

Kezrah Of Kapitola (@wearemostamused)

17/04/13 7:41 PM

@MelTankardReist their lastest video emphasises that self-esteem should come from how I view my looks. What about how I view my brain?

See also ‘Girls still getting the wrong messages about their bodies’ in which I argued what we really need is a ‘Love your Mind campaign’.

Claims to love me but I don’t think he meant it

Following our protest against 30 Rock stand-up comedian Tracy Morgan – who spread his anti-women pollution at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this week – and our calls for Regal Theatre in Perth not to give him a platform to spread his hate speech further, Morgan responded on Monday night. According to The Real Steve Gray, this is what he said:

In front of a sold out Regal Theatre in Perth last night, 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan addressed the bad press he received in Melbourne on the weekend.

“All I’m trying to do is make people laugh,” he said onstage.

Fans allegedly stormed out of Hamer Hall during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in disgust – some demanding refunds – claiming he was misogynist and lacked humour.

It was all sexually related. He said he was a pervert and this is the sort of stuff he liked and then it went on from there,” she said.

“He went everywhere, he discussed disabled people having sex, what his experiences were, everything he discussed was just disgusting.”

Women’s rights campaigner Melinda Tankard urged for the cancellation of his remaining Australian dates.

Morgan has been called out for offensive material in the past..

“Collective Shout is calling on Regal Theatre to not give Morgan a platform for Morgan’s misogynist hate speech,” Tankard posted on her website.

“It’s fear, [Tankard] doesn’t understand me,” Morgan told Perth fans. “I love her anyway,” he added.

Social media exploded with conversation after the initial MICF reviews surfaced.

“Unfunny, sexist, racist, misogynistic, disgusting rubbish,” one Melbourne attendee posted.

“I left thinking he is chauvinist pig and I can’t believe I paid almost $80 for it!” commented another.

On occasion last night Morgan made jokes at the expense of his enemies and refused the censor his material. “Go home and blog some shit ’cause you ain’t gettin’ any,” he said. “I don’t give a fuck what you think.”

See also ‘Tracy Morgan sparks outrage in Australia’ 

The deluge of apologists for Morgan’s behaviour has been remarkable, even by usual standards. I’m still processing it and will write about it further. Seems anything is justifiable in the name of ‘art’ or ‘entertainment’. Here’s the Regal Theatre’s response to a Collective Shout supporter:

Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2013 11:27:12 +0800

From: regal@iinet.net.au

Subject: Re: Tracy Morgan hate speech

Hi

I appreciate your email, but the Regal does not engage in discrimination when selecting acts for our venue.

Many thanks,

KIM KNIGHT

Manager

Regal Theatre 474 Hay St Subiaco Western Australia 6008 0448 111 308 9388 2066

That’s right folks, we allow acts at our venue to discriminate against ANYONE!

If you don’t like it don’t go?

There’s this idea that the problem with us, for being ‘offended’, not with Morgan’s speech.

My colleague Nicole Jameson addresses this really well:

‘If you don’t like it leave, or don’t go in the first place’ IS a defence of misogyny – it’s based on the false, apologetic premise that hate speech against women is only subjectively offensive. Sexism doesn’t go away if we ignore it, nor if we dress it up as ‘edgy humour’ or ‘boundary pushing’ in order to swallow it.

Related to this is this Women’s View on News piece ‘Bare boobs are now news’ 

Call on Regal Theatre to pull Morgan off the program  

How much more women-hating are we expected to endure? And this latest manifestation in the name of ‘entertainment’? 

Steve Bennett has written this review of 30 Rock’s Tracy Morgan’s stand-up Performance at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival  for UK comedy guide Chortle. Here’s an extract: 

So here’s the problem. There’s only one reason Tracy Morgan can fill Melbourne’s 2,600-seat Hamer Hall twice in one night, and that’s 30 Rock: a sophisticated, endearing and witty sitcom. But Morgan’s stand-up is none of those things.

This is an unpleasant, graphic, charmless 45-minute tirade – brevity being a rare redeeming feature – sharing his baser instincts in putrid detail, and very little humour.

‘Fucking women are crazy’ he tells us, with his advice to the fairer sex being both, ‘get yo’ ass in the fucking kitchen’ and ‘give that pussy up and stop this bullshit.’ For ‘bullshit’, he means ‘conversation’, I think, for as he taps his head, he warns the men: ‘Once a woman get in there, she live rent-free.’

Let us not assume he is discriminatory about ‘bitches’, though, as he shows no prejudice as to where he sticks his penis: Fat, thin, black, white, disabled – all women can be a receptacle for him. He is something of a vaginal connoisseur, sharing his informed reviews: ‘That pussy be burnt out’; ‘That crippled pussy stays wet’; ‘that pussy stink just a little bit’… there was something about the lubricating ‘discharge’ from a disabled woman too, but I was too busy gagging to write that line down verbatim. Read full story here 

It was good to know at least some people walked out. Even better would be if those planning to attend his gig at the Regal Theatre tomorrow night boycotted it. Collective Shout is calling on Regal Theatre to not give Morgan a platform for Morgan’s misogynist hate speech.

Contact details for the Regal theatre in Perth:

https://www.facebook.com/theregaltheatre

t 08 9388 2066
f 08 9388 2860
regal@iinet.net.au
www.regaltheatre.com.au
474 Hay Street Subiaco WA 6008

See also:

Lip Magazine – Fans storm out of Tracy Morgan’s MICF comedy show

News.com.au – Fans walk out on Tracy Morgan’s comedy show

‘We showed companies all over the world that rewarding rape is not just wrong, it’s a bad marketing strategy’

So happy to report some good news.

U.S based women’s protest movement UltraViolet led a massive protest against rapper Rick Ross and his endorsement deal with Reebok, prompted by his lyrics in the Rocco song ‘U.O.E.N.O’., about drugging a woman and having sex with her without her knowledge.

Ross’s segment on the song featured spiking a woman’s drink with the drug MDMA, also known as Ecstasy or molly:

Put molly all in her Champagne

She ain’t even know it

I took her home and I enjoyed that

She ain’t even know it.

Only 13-months-old, UltraViolet harnessed a groundswell of protests that forced Reebok to end its relationship with the rapper. Much of the action took place through social media, resulting in a mammoth 90,000 signature petitions, 10,000 phone calls and 2000 tweets.

Protest outside the Reebok store in Manhattan (NYT)

Here’s an email I just received about the campaign’s success.

Dear Melinda,

YOU just dealt a big blow to rape culture.

Thanks to 100,000 UltraViolet members and our allies who spoke out, Reebok just ended their endorsement deal with Rick Ross, the rapper who brags about raping a woman on his recent single. The 90,000 petition signatures, 10,000 phone calls, 2,000 tweets, the letter signed by 500 rape survivors, and the nearly 100 people who rallied at Reebok’s New York City flagship store sent a clear message: we won’t stand for a company that rewards rape.

And Reebok listened. In fact they issued a strong statement, saying “We are very disappointed [Ross] has yet to display an understanding of the seriousness of this issue or an appropriate level of remorse.”1

When a company does the right thing, it’s important that we thank them–so we’re going to send them a thank you card, signed by thousands of UltraViolet members. We’ll also send the card to the press to help Reebok get good publicity for taking a stand against rape. Can you sign the card?

Sign the thank you card to Reebok.

This isn’t just a blow to Rick Ross–it’s going to have an impact on how companies like Reebok choose their spokespeople in the future. We showed companies all over the US–and all over the world–that rewarding rape is not just wrong, it’s a bad marketing strategy.

After Todd Akin, Rick Ross, Steubenville, and far too many similar stories, it’s clear we have a lot of work to do together to end rape culture. But right now, we need to take a moment to thank Reebok, and show companies everywhere that if they stand up for women, it will pay off. Can you sign the thank you card?

Thanks for speaking out,

Nita, Shaunna, Kat, Malinda, and Karin, the UltraViolet team

Ross part of another video eroticising violence against women

Remember Rick Ross’s part in a behind-the-scenes clip for the Kanye West Monster video which showed him eating a plate of meat between the spread legs of a dead woman?  Collective Shout, Adios Barbie and others joined together in a global campaign against the Monster video which was described as a rape scenario set to a soundtrack – and won. MTV refused to screen it.

See also: ’32 overlooked rape lyrics in rap’

There’s been a ton of media coverage on the adultification and sexualisation of children lately. This program aired on Channel 7’s Today Tonight Monday. Click picture below to view clip.

And just a clarification re the KMart campaign. It wasn’t actually me who was instrumental in getting KMart to pull certain items – that win was the result of grassroots protests by a number of individuals and it happened pretty quickly. However I was encouraged to receive a call from KMart CEO Guy Russo personally apologising and a short time after, with Julie Gale of Kids Free 2B Kids, to meet Guy and his staff at the company’s Melbourne headquarters. KMart was invited to sign Collective Shout’s Corporate Social Responsibility Pledge which asks corporates to sign a statement of intention not to objectify women and sexualise girls in products and services. We hope to make an announcement soon.

And great to see this issue get Page 1 treatment in the Daily Telegraph this week.

“There really is a global backlash” – MTR

Netmums website finds parents believe modern life steals kids’ childhood

PARENTS believe childhood ends at 12 and blame pressure from friends, celebrity culture and social media for rushing kids into adulthood.

Almost 90 per cent of parents think modern children grow up faster than previous generations, while one in two parents admit their daughters worry about their Facebook popularity, a survey by the Netmums website has found.

Modern tweens prefer to play alone on iPads, with 83 per cent of their parents saying their favourite activity was playing outdoors.

Boys are under pressure to be “macho” and “good at everything” while girls are under “immense strain to be thin” and sexy before being mature enough to cope.

Do you agree? Tell us below.

The British survey found 54 per cent of parents were angry with retailers, saying clothing for girls was too sexual, provocative and short.

The anger against retailers who foster the “pornification of culture” was growing, said Melinda Tankard Reist, co-founder of campaign group Collective Shout. “There really is a global backlash about forcing children to grow up too fast and telling little girls they have to be thin, hot and sexy to be acceptable,” she said.  Read more here.

Feminist Conversations is a regular feature here at Feminists for Choice. Today we are talking to Melinda Tankard Reist, co-editor of Big Porn Inc: Exposing the harms of the global pornography industry. Melinda is also the co-founder of Collective Shout: for a world free of sexploitation.

How did you become interested in researching pornography?

There were a few things that came together around the same time. Women started telling me their stories of being hurt and harmed by a partner’s compulsive porn use. In my talks in schools, teen girls shared with me the pressure they felt to provide a porn-style performance, to act, essentially, as a sexual service station for men and boys. They were expected to provide naked images of themselves, to provide sexual services. As well, the sex industry was dominating and colonising every public space and was rarely brought to account. I began to talk to my publishers about what I was hearing. Spinifex had published an earlier book in 2004 titled Not for Sale: feminists resisting prostitution and pornography edited by Christine Stark and Rebecca Whisnant. It was a powerful book. But so much had happened since then, especially with the internet being used to globalise and spread pornography. We felt that a new book on pornography was needed. It also seemed to be a natural progression from my previous book Getting Real: challenging the sexualisation of girls, published by Spinifex in 2009.

There seems to be an overall consensus in the book that pornography is the same (or similar to) prostitution. Can you explain the similarities?

Yes, the writers in the book would mostly argue that pornography is filmed (or graphically depicted) prostitution. Melissa Farley uses the term ‘infinite prostitution’. The pornography industry has many of the features of the prostitution industry–it needs to procure women through trafficking, it relies on pimps to mediate transactions with the women who will be used, and the women it procures generally have histories of sexual abuse, poverty and homelessness. Pornography is advertising for prostitution and normalises the sexual exploitation of women. As well, men often want to act out what they see in porn on ‘live’ women. Pornography is often used as a form of initiation into prostitution. It’s also the case that women in pornography are concurrently being prostituted off-set, or go on to be used in systems of prostitution and stripping. The overlap between the prostitution and pornography businesses is so great that we might see them as operating in parallel, or perhaps as one larger sex industry. However, I think it’s also important to understand the differences between the pornography and prostitution sectors of the sex industry, and Big Porn Inc highlights these differences for pornography in particular. Firstly, the abuses that women undergo in pornography have a permanent or semi-permanent record made of them in the form of film, etc. This record causes many women great hardship and stress, because they feel they can never escape their past, and suffer anxiety at the prospect that anyone they meet throughout their lives has seen the pornography. They are also vulnerable to blackmail over it. The permanency of pornography causes particular suffering for women whose childhood sexual abuse was filmed as child pornography and shared by their abusers. Another aspect of the pornography industry that might distinguish it from the rest of the sex industry is the culture of ‘celebrity’ and ‘glamour’ that has developed around the industry in the last ten years. Jenna Jameson and Sascha Grey have been central to the promotion of the idea that pornography is a way for poor girls to escape their lives and become rich and famous, but of course the reality of the industry for the overwhelming majority of women/girls is that they are used up in around three months because of the extremity of the abuse and degradation of contemporary pornography. However, this culture of celebrity is very attractive to poor girls, and unfortunately draws them to the industry in a way that doesn’t necessarily happen for prostitution businesses. It means that the pornography industry is able to attract particularly young women, and in increasingly large numbers. The industry is normalised among younger generations to an extent that prostitution is not, because of widespread consumption of pornography among this generation, and the celebration of pornography by the popular media and culture. A third difference between the pornography and prostitution industries is the diversity of forms pornography takes–it is possible for women/girls to be sold as pornography through being used by their ‘boyfriends’ in front of home-based webcams, for example. While it is also common that ‘boyfriends’ pimp women through their homes, in the case of pornography this pimping is made difficult to recognise as illegal because of technology and the glamorising of pornography. There are businesses dedicated to the pimping of women through pay-per-view webcams, as well as pornography made of women being used through brothels. This diversity in the mode of business that pornography takes means that the industry is able to expand with very little scrutiny and opposition, let alone government oversight. The industry essentially operates in unchartered, frontier space in the absence of any controls whatsoever. Governments and societies worldwide are overwhelmed by the diversity of the sex industry, and so far haven’t managed to enact any governance frameworks at all that might curb its expansion and domination over culture and the economy.

What is your overall message about pornography that the book also highlights?

I think a major theme of the book is that the first and most egregious harm of pornography is to the women and girls who are used to make it. While the harm of pornography does extend to women much more widely, when we think about pornography we must think about the women who are harmed in its production first. This is because women/girls used in pornography are perhaps the most vulnerable and exploited population in our society. They are often racially marginalised, as well as victims of childhood sexual abuse, homelessness, and addiction. Their life chances are very poor, and even more so after they have been through the pornography industry. The writing in Big Porn Inc against the pornography industry mostly prioritises the interests of these women/girls in the way it does not make distinctions between ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ pornography, or ‘better’ and ‘worse’ forms of pornography. For the women and girls used in the industry, these distinctions are often meaningless, because the same women are used in both types of pornography production. Often they start out in ‘soft’ production, but then must be used in more violent and degrading productions to be able to make money and stay in the industry. For these women and girls, the chance to lead a life of quality and dignity depends on our efforts to dismantle the sex industry and create social services and facilities that will allow them to recover from childhood sexual abuse, to escape homelessness, and escape pimps or exploitative ‘boyfriends’. In addition to these women, of course, pornography harms many others, including the children who are sexually abused through perpetrators showing them pornography, as well as wives/girlfriends who are pressured to ‘act’ out scenes in pornography, and girls and boys who grow up seeing pornography as a ‘model’ for sexual relationships and never have a chance at understanding what true physical affection and tenderness looks like. Average age of first exposure to porn is 11. This is distorting and warping young people’s views of their bodies, relationships and sex. I believe it is an unprecedented assault on the healthy sexuality young people.

The trend in pornography seems for “sex” to be increasingly violent and aggressive. Can you explain why that is?

Yes, as Gail Dines and others show, the pornography industry over time has definitely escalated its violence against women and the level of degradation and humiliation it inflicts. Researchers have gathered empirical evidence that the more popular forms of pornography are the ones that are more violent and overtly degrading of women. Torture porn has become increasingly popular, rape sites, live S&M and bondage in which women are brutalised in whatever way the viewer requests. And it’s all becoming more and more mainstream. For example the documentary film Kink is about to screen at the Sundance Film Festival. The Kink website shows images of women in extreme positions of pain and torture. It seems it’s not even about ‘sex’ anymore – it’s about how much brutality and degradation a woman can cope with. And this is where many young men take their cues for relating sexually to women.

What is your response when people state that there are no victims in porn (just consenting adults)?

Linda Boreman’s (Lovelace) account of her time in the pornography industry where she was brutalised and forced into its production shows this claim to be untrue. Traci Lords’s use in pornography as a sixteen-year-old also shows that the industry does not always use adult women. Even women who glamorise their time in the pornography industry sometimes describe aspects of its brutality, such as Jenna Jameson’s How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale in which she describes being incapacitated for six hours after a sex scene in which she was injured internally. The notion of ‘consent’ that proponents of the sex industry use to justify their moneymaking activities is an extremely impoverished one. The idea that young women surviving childhood sexual abuse who are homeless and being pimped by a ‘boyfriend’ are making a ‘choice’ to enter the pornography industry is laughable. The ‘consent’ invoked for women used in pornography is nothing more than a legal ploy to allow the filming of prostitution and sexual abuse (and sometimes overt physical torture) without the threat of arrest and prosecution. These activities are allowed to take place in society only because the cover of ‘sex’ makes them somehow different from what they really are, which is rape, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and exploitation.

When did you first consider yourself a feminist and what influenced that decision?

It is difficult to identify one key moment. There was a dawning recognition about the global maltreatment of women. It was, I suppose, recognising the second-class status of women pretty much everywhere. I have travelled a lot and witnessed the abuse of women in so many parts of the world. You just have to look at the raw statistic on violence, ‘honour’ killings, dowry deaths, female genital mutilation, child brides, forced abortion, forced sterilisation, female foeticide, female infanticide, the systematic elimination of women and girls in so many ways. I recall being in a shelter in Hyderabad, India. On the bottom level were the abandoned baby girls; many plucked from rubbish heaps, with bruises and broken bones. On the second level were the abandoned pregnant girls and women. On the top level were the abandoned widows. Three layers of discrimination against women, all in that one home.

What does feminism mean to you?

It means working to change the second-class status of women. To addressing the real, felt needs of women (I was privileged to help set up a supported accommodation and outreach service for women and girls pregnant and without support in Australia.) To advocating for women and girls everywhere and all the time. It means trying to make the world better for my three daughters and the daughters of other women as well. It means engaging in grass roots activism and empowering other women to speak out, through movements like Collective Shout: for a world free of sexploitation (www.collectiveshout.org) It also means working in solidarity with the best people I have ever met.

Published on the Feminists for Choice Blog

Attend and support a screening in March

We would like to extend a special invitation to attend or support an Adelaide screening of the documentary Miss Representation.

This film explores how the media’s misrepresentations of women have led to the under representation of women in positions of power and influence, and premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

Watch: Miss Representation extended trailer

The film will be screened in Adelaide on March 4-6, as part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival. Each screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring various prominent sportswomen, journalists, educators, and politicians. Part proceeds from the event will go to benefit the Eating Disorders Association of SA.

If you are in Adelaide – come along! A number of local Collective Shout members have been involved in organising this screening, and we would love to see you there. Melinda Tankard Reist will be on the discussion panel on Tuesday March 5, and SA state coordinator Nicole Jameson on Wednesday March 6.

Click here to purchase tickets.

Melinda will also be speaking at a Parent Seminar at Loreto College, Marryatville on Wednesday March 6 – for details, click here.

Not in Adelaide? You can still support this film and its important message! Make a pledge on the film’s crowdfunding page here.

For more information, sign up to follow Miss Representation Adelaide on social media:

Twitter @missrepfringe13

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MissRepresentationatAdelaideFringe2013

(Click image to enlarge)

As published on Collective Shout