When you are wondering along the beach with your kids this summer and you see the I-Scream van be sure to take your kids along for a free ice cream? What topping would they like? Raspberry Ripple favoured lube, or Toffee Apple flavoured lube? If you can persuade them to perform an orgasm face then post it on Facebook they could win £200 of Sexy Goodies. Yes, Ann Summers, in its usual pursuit of good taste is taking a tour with an ice cream van, where is is offering free ice cream with flavoured lube. And offering incentives to people to perform sex faces. And when we say people, let’s be honest, it’s women. Ann Summers markets itself towards women.
When I first started writing this post I wrote a few paragraphs to head off any accusations of prudery or being a dried up old prune. But I deleted what I wrote because I really shouldn’t have to list my own sexual proclivities in order to be able to criticise a high street marketing campaign which infantilises an adult activity and encourages the exploitation of women.
Sex is fun, but it is also a serious business with many emotions attached to it. In my younger years I was quite taken with Ann Summers as a shop. I thought that having a shop on the high street where you could pop in and pick up a new vibrator on your way back home was great and enlightened, normalising sex and empowering women. Now my view has completely changed. Instead of normalising sex I think Ann Summers cheapens it, with their tacky underwear, poor quality vibrators and disgusting edible lubricants. Rather than empower women to have control of their own sexuality, it portrays a sexual environment where women feel they should changing their behaviour to please men, whether that is by dressing up, using bondage gear or this BJ strap. Not particularly empowering is it? The mainstreaming of this sort of shop creates expectations of sexually permissive behaviour, women, and even girls, feel they have to live up to the naughty nurse, or saucy air hostess fantasy instead of just enjoying loving, mutually satisfactory sex.
But the very worst thing about this campaign for me is the enticement for girls to win a goody bag full of Ann Summers tat if they just take a picture of themselves making an “O face” i.e. a picture of themselves pretending to orgasm, then posting it to Facebook to be rated. So not only are they to be exploited by posing like a porn star, but they are then to be judged on the quality of their pose. I wonder what makes a good orgasm face? Presumably as close to a porn star as possible, seeing as it likely that the people who will vote on this particular portrait gallery will never have seen a woman orgasm in real life.
I wonder at the women who want to share these sort of pictures with friends, family and strangers. Like my just woken up look, when my sleep wrinkles are trying to unstick themselves (which is sadly taking longer and longer these days), my expression when engaged in orgasm is a sight I would only want to share with my partner. The women and girls who will end up taking part in this Britain’s Got Pornstars competition are a product of today’s society. The media is full of girls who’s only achievements are to have slept with a celebrity, or parade about in skimpy clothes. Like a naughty child who acts up when they realise they only get attention for behaving badly, these girls get the message that they will only be valued for who they sleep with and how they look. So they dress in what they think is the male fantasy, and act out the male sexual fantasy, or whatever it is that will get them the attention they desire.
We as a society need to start proving that we value women as more than just sexual objects. We need to give them more to aspire to than life as “that girl who slept with a footballer then went on Celebrity Big Brother”. Only then can they have confidence in who they really are and have a sexual relationship that they really want, with someone who respects them, and not feel the need to feed into the sordid, misogynistic view of sex that Ann Summers promotes.
I think women being open about sex with each other and with their partners is a good thing. But there is a difference between being open about sex and being public about it. I don’t want to have to explain to my 4 year old why she can’t have an ice cream from the van peddling cheap sexual expectations. By the same token, I think anyone engaging in sex should be mature enough not to need an ice cream van reminiscent of their childhood to explore their sexuality. Finally, I think Ann Summers should really think about what they are asking of the women who they want to pose with their “O face” and realise how demeaning an exploitative it is. Of course women are mostly free to make their own choices and could choose not to, but these choices are not made in a societal vacuum, and we have created a society where people think this sort of behaviour is except able, and even to be expected. I hope anyone with a sense of integrity realises that it isn’t. I implore you to stop shopping in Ann Summers, the shop that thinks a strap with which men can control a women giving him a blow job is acceptable and even empowering. Stop buying the ridiculous magazines and the Daily Mail, which celebrate women as objects of desire or ridicule depending on their face, body or dress. Teach your sons and daughters that sex is wonderful, and should be explored with someone you trust, and not Ann Summers or Facebook.
UPDATE: I can’t embed linky blog hops in WordPress but please take a look at this blog hop at Salt & Caramel for more great posts on this topic.
Dilly Tante 
I want to marry this post and have it’s babies. Unfort I can’t twitter or facebook this post atm but I agree with every word.
Thanks for the comment 😀
I feel sick and haven’t had my muesli yet. Wrong on so many levels. I propose a campaign. Spot the van, post location on twitter or facebook, follow it around being annoying, in a very tasteful way? Post alternative pictures on facebook?
Anyone got a good idea for a hashtag? It’s too early in the morning for my brain.
(Honestly, an icecream van, the sunshiney symbol of childhood innocence.)
Goddam that’s a good post. It needs to go viral, everyone should read it, especially girls and young women who are easily influenced and probably won’t think twice about playing the Anne Summers’ ice-cream O-face game. And yes, let us track the van down and throw hundreds of condoms filled with water at it, or spray it with dog pee so that many male dogs will follow it around, cocking their legs up its wheels and drenching it with canine urine. I think the image and the smell might just put potential 0-facers off.
I couldn’t agree more with everything you have written. The idea of getting people to post ‘erotic’ poses to Facebook where the ownership of the image is lost is unbelievable. These images could be used in all manner of ways in the future, and the idea that you get judged is ridiculous. Your expression at orgasm is an involuntary one, unless you’re faking! And so these staged photos with expressions learnt from porn will be out there for all to see. It is sad that there are women who want to do this, who would aspire to win this.
Well done for writing this post. Very interesting.
Brilliant post – well said – ditto to all the above! Now I have to run as the real ice-cream van is due any minute!!
What an excellent post & echoing above comments, how sad that ‘women’s lib’ has come to this
I love this post. I hate how women and girls these days so often think they’re liberated because they now have the right to look as cheap and slutty as they like. It’s just another form of oppression in my eyes, but worse because the women themselves don’t see it as wrong. Do you know the Divine Comedy song ‘Generation Sex’? This post reminded me of it – there’s a line that goes “Generation Sex protects the rights of girls who want to take their clothes off, as long as we can all watch’. What sad days we live in.
Great post! I can see how young women will do this given we have such an either/or view of female sexuality. In the past I’d have done it, thinking it might be one in the eye for those who believe women should all cover up or risk being seen as wanton or “asking for it”. I’d never have stopped to think “but where is the actual pleasure for me, or for any other woman doing this”? Female sexuality reduced to how you’re seen by others and not how you actually feel. You’re so right that we need to teach our children to look beyond this, but why should we have to be up against it in the first place?
I remember that Divine Comedy song – it also has a bit with a woman saying “it’s the 90s” – which is quite sad when you realise we’re still there.
This really is quite repulsive. I could never understand why anyone who had any respect for themselves as a woman would put a foot over the door of that shop. Respect for yourself is something that has to be taught by parents. It was the one thing my mum always said to us growing up when we started to venture into boy territory. ‘have respect for yourself and don’t ever let anyone demean you’. It always really stuck with me. I remember almost falling out with friends on holiday who entered a wet t-shirt contest. Why should I provide cheap thrills to anyone I remember thinking. I think a lot of girls who do this sort of thing must really be lacking in confidence and undervalue themselves so much.
Could hardly believe how minging the icecream/lube thing sounded. Like all the above, and brilliant comments, I really agree. X