Sir, - I refer to a recent contretemps concerning a cover illustration to the magazine Business & Finance, depicting a prone female under a (clearly male) boot. Connoisseurs of this kind of twaddle will be eager to hear that, a year or so ago, there was a series of posters around town advertising, I think, a perfume. Because they depicted a female standing upon the backs of two nude and prostrate males, I decided to take, as they say, exception.
So I penned a note of protest, full of good stuff about gender stereotyping and sexual triumphalism and so on - and, reader, unless you yourself have, actually bought into it, that kind of guff is incredibly hard to write - and posted it off to the Advertising Standards people. Needless to say, they tentatively approached the advertisers, were told to get stuffed, reverted to me and told me to get stuffed. And that, pretty much as expected it was that.
I'd forgotten all about it until this recent outrage (sic) of course, but I can't help but wonder if what is sauce for the goose ought not to likewise - be sauce for she who takes a gander. Or have I got it all wrong again? - Yours, etc.
Ardenza Terrace,
Monkstown, Co Dublin.