Playboy is not for YUSU
YUSU have vetoed a request from Playboy to allow a day of marketing for a modelling talent search. The SU would have been paid for granting campus advertising rights, but denied the request because the idea was “heterosexist” and “involved the objectification of women.”
Playboy’s aim was to promote their Playboy UK Model contest, in which women upload pictures of themselves wearing lingerie to a website. Each model has a profile which displays their “vital statistics”.
Viewers of the website are encouraged to vote by text for their favourite model, with texts charged at a premium 75p rate. At the end of each month the winner is granted, among other things, a “lingerie shoot for Playboy.co.uk” and “your pictures on our website advertising promotions.”
Amy Foxton, YUSU’s Academic and Welfare Officer, said; “It was decided that Playboy are a company we do not wish to promote because they contravene the work we do in promoting equality.”
The decision has met with mixed reaction from students.
“I think it’s great that the SU aren’t supporting Playboy,” said Ros Sharpey, a third-year. “This is essentially the market of objectifying women in a rather degrading way.”
But according to David Hughes, a third-year, YUSU’s policies are “rife with inconsistency”.
“If this conflicts with YUSU’s stated policy, how can it allow events such as the Playboy Mansion? YUSU needs to sort out its own ethical position before rejecting money from brands which it already appears to endorse.”
Campus events have been the subject of controversy in the national press; the Guardian featured third-year Bronach Kane’s campaign against Pole Exercise society.
Advertising for their Goldrush event featured a naked woman sliding down a pole of coins and “clearly promoted the idea of women as sexual objects to be bought and sold”, she said.
Hughes countered; “no-one is forcing anybody else to whip off their clothes and parade around in frilly knickers.”
