Friday, October 10, 2014

Business Women Doing Sexy

Long ago we became used to seeing pretty woman featured front and centre in ads for everything sleek and desirable, from fast cars to high-end condos. These adverts were and are created by professionals.  Lately though the habit is spreading to more homely communications. A recent news picture of a law firm's partners had the male lawyers hardly visible hidden out of the way behind a row of chairs in which sat an undoubtedly attractive set of their female colleagues, each in fashionably short skirts with their elegant legs arranged decoratively from left to right as the viewer's eye travels along the row.

Below is the online version of a picture accompanying a newspaper article on small business.

Fiona Lake Waslander is the general manager at Vicinity, a Toronto-based provider of rewards programs. (Mark Blinch For The Globe and Mail) 

In it we can see that the lady general manager of Vicinity (a small business rewards provider) is clearly wearing a skirt, but the focus is on her upper body and open countenance. In the larger version in print however, we see a pair of impressively long legs pushed forward and sideways as she balances rather precariously on a chest of drawers in her office. Hardly her everyday office posture one assumes! The fact that Ms Waslander is a tall, wholesome and healthy young woman is tangential to the purpose of her business. 

In this age of real concern about women still not being taken seriously enough in commerce, I am puzzled why such successful and intelligent women let themselves be photographed in even mildly provocative postures that have little or no relevance to the objectives of their company.

Hey, I like looking at elegant girls just like any red-blooded boy, but let's return to the real point of promotion - getting the company recognized for its management's business talents rather than its slate of attractive females.

1 comment:

  1. Come on Ian .... sex sells, that's the bottom line. How many folks would take an interest in the company if the message was delivered by a crusty old man?

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