Advertising that uses women's bodies to sell a product has become so ubiquitous that most of us hardly bat an eye when we see a bikini-clad bottom sprawled across a highway billboard. We live in a society that normalizes advertising with female sexuality, and when something is socially normalized, most people go about ingesting it without protest. 

Not everyone is so keen on complacency in the face of sexist marketing, however. In fact, upstanding ladies have been engaging with offensive advertising since the 1970s or so. A classic example of feminist graffiti comes in the form of spray-painted letters on the following billboard:

The ad suggests that sexual harassment is par for the course when attractive ladies are present. Pretty things get their bums grabbed at; it's just the way of the world. One spray-can-wielding feminist disagreed with the acceptance of sexual harassment as normal, everyday behavior. And plenty of contemporary feminists are following in that anonymous lady's footsteps. After all, we've not gotten terribly much better at advertising without offense since the '70s. 

One New York culture jammer recently called out Stella Artois on an ad campaign that likened beautiful women to beautiful beer. The ad featured a well-dressed white man gazing longingly at a well-dressed, attractive woman drinking a goblet of the Belgian lager against a white background. In between the two individuals was the Stella logo and the text, "she is a thing of beauty". The anonymous ad hacker merely whited out the words "of beauty", leaving the ad reading "she is a thing"--perhaps the more accurate message to take away from the image. If we perpetuate the cultural norm that women are to be looked at and consumed much in the same way that beer is, we're effectively reducing women from full human beings to products. Depicting a man seeing a woman and a lager in the same light, to be used for the same purpose--his own pleasure--can be a dangerous method of advertising. Let's not forget we still live in a culture where women's bodies are often assumed to be the property of whoever desires them. Ads like this one can't possibly help.

Some shots of the "This Insults Women" sticker have also popped up online, layered over and disrupting images that use women's bodies to advertise events or products. A wordier jam appeared over a Special K bus stop poster. The original ad encourages women to eat Special K in order to "shine" in their swimwear--because, as we all know, there's only one way to look good in a bathing suit, and it requires serious caloric reduction of whatever your diet is now. The fem-jammer declares, "I think I look pretty fabulous just the way I am. Also, Special K tastes like cardboard, so piss off." Piss off indeed. Well said, rad Irish lady.

It's good to see a market saturated with female sex appeal get some public resistance. You can check out more examples of women taking back the public space that demeans them over at Sociological Images. It seems that Sticker Sisters, producers of the "This Insults Women" sticker, has closed down (sad face), but there's nothing stopping you from printing out your own stickers and plastering them over whatever irks your feminist sensibilities. Or do as some of these anonymous ladies have done: grab a sharpie and layer your protest over the spaces that treat your bodies like products.