In March, Yves-Saint Laurent launched a new ad campaign in Paris’s streets featuring extremely skinny models, their legs open, their faces out of focus, wearing fishnets and heels. One of the major French feminist association, Osez Le Féminisme, along with hundreds of other Parisians denounced this campaign, qualifying it of sexist, saying it glorified the over-sexualization of young women. Raphaelle Remy-Leuleu, the spokeswoman of the group, said that: “It ticks all the sexist boxes. The women are objectified, hypersexualized and put in submissive positions.”
Bravo @YSL pour vos publicités misogynes. À l’approche du #8mars, c’est du meilleur goût #ContinuumDesViolences pic.twitter.com/5A9KnyosXu
— Osez le féminisme (@osezlefeminisme) 4 mars 2017
On Tuesday, March 28, twenty days after the launching of the YSL campaign (which afterward got canceled) Paris finally decided to change things.
In a press release from the city of Paris, we learn that JCDecaux, the French company now in charge of Paris’s billboards will have to ensure that their ads do not contain any “sexist, lesbophobic and/or homophobic stereotypes, as well as degrading, dehumanizing and vexatious representations of women and men.” Moreover, they also ensure no “advertisement cautioning any kind of discrimination based on ethnic origin, national origin, religion, gender or age.”
Anne Hidalgo, Paris’ Mayor, also declared that: “Along with cities like London and Geneva, that already have similar controls in place, Paris is leading the way … in preventing the dissemination, promotion and glorification of degrading images for certain categories of citizens” saying that it was “an important measure in bringing to a public space the daily fight against stereotypes and against violence towards women.”
Yves-Saint Laurent, however, has a long history of controversial advertisement campaigns. In 2002, the French fashion house used “full-frontal nudity” for a perfume ad and in 2015, they used an “unhealthy underweight model” for another campaign.
When will companies stop advertising sexist poses, when will we stop looking at people as if they were objects? If Paris’s new law is a step forward, our society still has a long way to go.
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