a force to be reckoned with

Back in February, a friend of mine living in Ontario emailed me about a Sympatico flyer that he found in his mailbox that morning. He called it "um, interesting," and rescued "a bunch" of them from his buildings recycling bin (that "bunch" ended up being close to 50 copies) in case it wasn't being distributed in Québec and figuring - bang on - that I'd be keen on seeing them. I hadn't - hadn't heard a peep about them, was really keen, and he replied:

Looks like this is a theme Sympatico chose for their latest advertising campaign. Even though I'm a card-carrying cynic, I still have difficulty believing that anyone was actually *stupid* enough to approve this. Someone's gonna get spanked....

Here's a letter to the editor: "Bell flyer offensive"
Here's an article on a print version of the advertisement: "ISP Blocks Body Parts to Promote Parental Controls"
which links to the following picture

Note the cutting, which is also featured on the flyer I received; the text on either side of the woman's head is also quite interesting, but it can't be made out in the scan. In essence, it compares the human body and the brain to a computer program.

The picture at lower left that has been cut out is interesting; the title of the "illustration" has been removed, and the implication is that this is an illustration of a uterus -- the remaining image, however, strongly suggests that it's a stomach. I guess they couldn't have worked with an actual drawing of a uterus because, heaven forbid, the part of the picture left in place might have contained a partial medical drawing of a... a... a... vagina! Looking at the flyers again, I'm not entirely sure that the original illustration for the "ovary" was actually of an ovary, either.

He threw them into the mail and I set to work investigating what the heck was going on. His last link led to to adrants “comments” page, which led to...you get the picture. I spent many hours online, reading blogs and reports (fewer that I imagined would be there, actually) but felt as though his scoop had led me to a fun and infuriating project - my favorite kind!

I received the actual flyer on Wednesday, conveniently right before I was teaching my class - and it made for an amazing opener - Had anyone received this in their mailbox? Thoughts? Fortunately (and thankfully!) I had enough copies to share. The conversation was incredible, leading to discussions of the "appropriate" female body in popular media, sexuality in popular culture's history and multiple discourses, and even the uses and abuses of 'humour.' Then we got on with our regularly scheduled programming.

Later that week, the listservs started buzzing - letters sent to Bell and received, comments ont he letters sent to Bell and received, conversations about how little some things have changed, how "the feminists" were humourless, etc. etc... The dialogue was fast and furious and fiery...The Toronto Women's Bookstore provided its newsletter recipients with MediaWatch contact info (for filing complaints online)...

And then Bell pulled the ad.

rabble.ca posted a really solid synopsis of what went down, how and why - as well as a list of the "women-run blogs" who helped the campaign along. It's definitely worth a look. And yup, one of them listed was a student in my class (*beam*).

And for those of you who missed this debacle entirely, here's the ad that started it all: