NEWS: Women's Bodies: Awesome! What Happens to Them: Offensive!

CULTURE: Women's Bodies: Awesome! What Happens to Them: Offensive!

Clearly, the above billboard is completely awesome, and if I lived in Manhattan, I would go store all my shit with Manhattan Mini Storage. If I had no shit to store, I would go out and buy shit in order to store it there.

But apparently some people disagree.

Indeed. Like, say, for instance this:

"Titties and food! Yay! And we make no apologies for it, either!" WTF? Only in a totally bizarro world do we think this sort of thing is unremarkable.

Or this:

"Hi, I'm a slut! Who eats meat! Hahaha, you know what we're talking about here!" Again, people: this is just so, so, gross.

Or even, y'know, this:

"Look at my panties!" Uhm, yeah. Right.

Porn, fine. Whatever. But for god's sake, if you want the unquestioned right to use women's sexuality to sell stupid unrelated shit, then let's not get all bent out of shape when someone uses women's right to their own bodies to do so.

Bitch_PhD wouldn't mind if the ad had said "your" right to choose rather than "her" right to choose, but y'know, that's a pretty minor quibble.

I would like to see that billboard go national. Everywhere.

That billboard is pretty much amazing.

I'm a fan.

+1

now if only we could get one of those storage spaces installed at South of the Border.

once again, you've managed to write an article that zips conveniently past a few key points. there are two different objections in the article you linked -- one that it's immoral and one that it's bad advertising.

with regards to the first, i'm fairly sure that our good friends in the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights also oppose scantily clad harlots. say what you will about their maddonna/whore complex, but i don't think you can nail them for hypocrisy on this particular issue.

with regards to the second, Himler is right: most people viewing any given billboard in this country are going to be ok with sexy womenfolk and not so ok with abortion jokes. though the article goes on to say:

so the guy you quoted to illustrate your point actually has nothing to do with it -- he was merely commenting on how people would receive it from an advertising standpoint, not passing a personal moral judgment.

so... how is this news? you took, for the umpteenth time, a serious issue that deserves to be discussed here and wrote a positively retarded article about it.

Using the idea of a back alley "coat-hanger abortion" to advertise your storage service does seem quite... out there.

I read the billboard as,

.... as she gets bigger from a pregnancy, she can use a wire coat hanger to have an abortion ......

"... Right to choose... " .... pro choice??

Tacky.

We've moved into the 21st century people.

I laughed extremely hard at this, even though it's completely terrible. Damn...

i think it's a foul and repulsive way to advertise anything. I don't even get what the point of it is.. how is her right to choose shrinking? wtf does that mean? I really don't get it.. Why doesn't the wire hanger comany just come out with an ad that says,

WIRE HANGERS: THE CHEAPER CHOICE!!

Beat me to it. I was thinking the same thing. Wire hanger in abortion related ad equals bad mental imagery.

Really, the fact that the guy who works in PR advises against cutting the client's profits in half, surprises you?

Is it shocking to you that there are people on both sides of the abortion issue? Who saw that coming? I'd have thought the religious nuts would have embraced this with open arms!

And I can't believe that that single entity called "advertising" run by that one guy, would allow sex to sell but prevent this billboard from going up!

Oh, wait. It is up? But then--

brilliant... in the eyes of few. not everyone is going to look at that and go "let me put my stuff there."

i don't find it offensive at all. maybe a little creepy, but definitely not offensive.

That's just perfect.

I loved it!

The coat hanger makes sense - if it's an advertisement to store dead fetuses.

It's a shame the lady in this story didn't know about this sooner.

Anyway, it's advertising. It's not a crime to get a viewpoint across.

I'm assuming the company is pro-choice. Good for them. It may be in bad advertising tastes, but I think it has a good message, and I applaud the company for going out on a limb to produce something of some actual substance. Especially if it's something they believe in.

i don't have a problem with the message or the coat hanger imagery. if it were up to me i would have billboards all over town campaigning for reproductive rights/education.

i do think that using this issue to advertise storage space is pornographic. its cutesy slogan and wire hanger double entendre do more to attract attention to the business and less to actually educate people.

I'd like to see the proposed advertising campaigns that were rejected in favor of this one.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is an ad by an agency with a laser-guided demographic targeting system.

What he and you fail to grasp however is that what the client is selling is a finite resource, and therefore the scale and options are completely different. Crest can't afford to alienate half the toothpaste users in the country. Manhattan Mini Storage can afford to alienate half of the million and a half or so people living in Manhattan because they only have to fill a couple of thousand units. If they want to make a political statement with their advertising, it's not going to affect their bottom line even slightly.

my thoughts exactly...
I still agree with the article though......