EasyJet Subvert - Do It Yourself!
Katy | 28.06.2003 23:19 | Culture | Education
Have you seen this ad from EasyJet- a two-foot picture of a pair of breasts with the tag-line 'Discover Weapons of Mass Distraction'? We found that the ad was dehumanising and patriarchal, not to mention inane, and contributed nothing to the cultural or esthetic character of our community. So we altered it, and so can you! Write your own rant to paste over the ad or download the ready-made .rtf file!
If you can't download the file for some reason, the text is at the bottom of this posting. We used 28pt bold Times New Roman,and you have to reduce all the margins to 1cm to get all the text to fit on one page. Set the format to wide/landscape, not tall/portrait.
To make the text big enough to (mostly) cover up the two-foot disembodied breasts: print it off on a normal A4 sheet (wide not tall). Cut the sheet in half to create two A5 sheets. Use a photocopier to blow each one up to A3 (ask someone at the librairy/newsagent for help with this). Tape them back together. Stick them on with wallpaper paste (costs about £2 from DIY shops).
Here's the text of the subvert, please alter it to more accurately reflect your own sense of outrage:
Thank you, EasyJet, for this sexist, dated image which you have imposed upon our community. I thought this kind of blatant, woman-as-a-piece-of-meat imagery disappeared in the seventies. It’s nice to know that, even in these modern times, corporations can still be counted upon to undo fifty years of Womens’ Liberation in order to make an EasyAdvertisingGimmick. I guess peddling this kind of EasySleaze is Easy-er than coming up with a real ad design. Every time I walk past this ad, I contemplate how the female body has once again been commodified and devalued by some corporation out to make an EasyBuck, while promoting cheap short-distance flights at a time when greenhouse emissions from your EasyJets contribute to climate change at an unprecedented rate, almost certainly leading to EasyMajor-Climatic-Disasters-And-Large-Scale-Environmental-Devastation within my lifetime.
To make the text big enough to (mostly) cover up the two-foot disembodied breasts: print it off on a normal A4 sheet (wide not tall). Cut the sheet in half to create two A5 sheets. Use a photocopier to blow each one up to A3 (ask someone at the librairy/newsagent for help with this). Tape them back together. Stick them on with wallpaper paste (costs about £2 from DIY shops).
Here's the text of the subvert, please alter it to more accurately reflect your own sense of outrage:
Thank you, EasyJet, for this sexist, dated image which you have imposed upon our community. I thought this kind of blatant, woman-as-a-piece-of-meat imagery disappeared in the seventies. It’s nice to know that, even in these modern times, corporations can still be counted upon to undo fifty years of Womens’ Liberation in order to make an EasyAdvertisingGimmick. I guess peddling this kind of EasySleaze is Easy-er than coming up with a real ad design. Every time I walk past this ad, I contemplate how the female body has once again been commodified and devalued by some corporation out to make an EasyBuck, while promoting cheap short-distance flights at a time when greenhouse emissions from your EasyJets contribute to climate change at an unprecedented rate, almost certainly leading to EasyMajor-Climatic-Disasters-And-Large-Scale-Environmental-Devastation within my lifetime.
Katy
Comments
Hide the following 7 comments
Can't see the image
29.06.2003 00:05
jan
Why not be concise?
29.06.2003 00:07
short & to the point
We are one sisters!
29.06.2003 01:54
Millicent Tant
fantastic
30.06.2003 08:18
and that there shouldn't be any rules about how a subvert should or shouldn't work.
After all, there's usually plenty of time before the next bus rolls along.
But how great would it be to see this text pasted over one of the massive billboard versions of the ad?
Nice one...
Harry from London Rising Tide
e-mail:
london@risingtide.org.uk
Homepage:
http://www.burningplanet.net
Come off it guys
30.06.2003 20:03
Is EasyJet the only company attempting to use sex to sell?
This has been happening for the last 50 years!
Look around you!
Duhhhhhhhh
john smith
Oh dear, Oh dear
03.07.2003 11:49
Nelster
They use sex because it works
17.08.2004 14:43
Richard Roper