Letters to the editor: Sex sells at Fanshawe
Sex promotion has slowly grown to be acceptable in today's standards of living. We see it on our posters, in our newspaper, on the front of our program guides, at our student union, at our events, and all of it in happening in our school. We can fight the good fight but it will win due to mass backing and the freedoms we use to justify it.
Here at Fanshawe sex is being used as the first approach to promotion, even when the thing being promoted has nothing to do with sex. Sex in moderation doesn't bother me, it's the collaborative build up of bikini girls and sexual innuendoes being used excessively for promotion that does. I understand that sex and beauty sells; however, sex is cheap, beauty is easy to catch the eye, and the more it gets used, the less we notice it.
I was upset when I saw the new program booklets that will be distributed Canada-wide in order to draw more people to the school. If you haven't seen the booklets then please do search a copy out, I know the Marketing Department has stacks of them. A few I suggest you pick up are: Human Services, Health, and Computer Technology. For now I will talk about the one that hits home, the one that represents what I am representing, which is Human Services.
On the cover of our booklet it has your stapled beauty queen, blond, blue-eyed, painfully thin and air brushed to perfection. The title states, “Passionate about Human and Community Services?” Under which is a woman posing three times. The first is a glamour shot, model looks disinterested with her surroundings by wearing an egotistical expression, and the only difference from the first and second shot is that this time she is removing her glasses. In the third pose the girl opens her jacket to a slightly altered Superman symbol with the letter F replacing the well-known Superman logo. I understand the message that is trying to get across about passion; Superman is to stopping bank robbers as students are to helping others, but the truth of the matter is, the picture is just eye-candy being fed to a world with a sweet tooth.
All but a couple of people on the cover of these booklets actually go to Fanshawe. Instead, they come from a modeling agency, which surfaces another point; shouldn't we have students in those programs be the ones representing it instead of an unaffiliated model? I have talked to the people over in Marketing and have confirmed this to be entirely true. Our tuition money is going towards hiring these people to do a job that should be a job for us, the students. I am disappointed with the Marketing Division here at Fanshawe, which is responsible for this fiasco. There needs to be change and that change is letting us, the students of these programs, have a say before they hit the press.
Events like the “Meet Santa and His Naughty Elves”, “Christmas Kick-Ass Country Pub”, all the Naughty Business Events and let's not forget the ever so popular “Sex Toy Bingo.” Posters for events are hardly ever noticed unless they have a “sexy women” on it. It's appealing yet has nothing to do with the event, and if it does have something to do with the event then it's redundant, like how sex ties into something like Christmas. If you want a reason to promote sex then just name your event “Sex, Sex and More Sex Event,” instead of masking sex into just any event.
There has been some students' upset about “Sex Toy Bingo,” saying that it is immoral, unethical and very offensive, which is true only to the “few.” I think the real problem at hand is not the use of the word sex, or the lucid distribution of sex toys, but the applause the host gets for his knows no bounds type of sexist humour. We are not at a point in society where we can freely believe that all is well and equal and making jokes that exploit women just takes away from what many women and men are fighting for - gender equality. You heard the saying “think before you speak,” well same goes for another saying, “think before you laugh.” Events like these are being promoted by your student union, the self proclaimed voice of us all and also the voice that speaks as one; this said together does not make much sense now does it?
Another example of blatant inappropriateness is how our Fanshawe Student Union is selling themselves to the College Student Alliance to win the annual conference bid (CSA, aka the four dollars we pay annually to be a part of, but never hear about). By hiking up their pants, rolling down their shirts and giving the impression of being naked behind the FSU Banner is their ideal idea for successful promotion.
Sex is being used by many different sections of Fanshawe which all in turn in some way, shape or form can be traced back to the Student Union. They are the ones who make events, approve posters, hire entertainers, and have an influential pro Fanshawe leg in the door of the Interrobang. They are at the hub of this problem; however, are not the source, the source is us, the fuel of it is our silence and attendance and if we keep on giving the idea that this is what we want to see in our school or in our society then I am worried nothing will change.
The more I talk about these issues the more I realize how many different people have a strong opinion about it. One point I do want to stress before I end this article is this, you can feel about any issue the way you want to, we do not all have to be ultra conservative or critical thinkers (not like the two go together) to have such a strong opinion about this. We must know our boundary and I feel like it is being crossed on a weekly basis. One question I would like to pose to you all is this, has sex replaced creativity?
by Chris Walker
c_walker17903@fanshaweonline.ca
Human Services Representative
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
Here at Fanshawe sex is being used as the first approach to promotion, even when the thing being promoted has nothing to do with sex. Sex in moderation doesn't bother me, it's the collaborative build up of bikini girls and sexual innuendoes being used excessively for promotion that does. I understand that sex and beauty sells; however, sex is cheap, beauty is easy to catch the eye, and the more it gets used, the less we notice it.
I was upset when I saw the new program booklets that will be distributed Canada-wide in order to draw more people to the school. If you haven't seen the booklets then please do search a copy out, I know the Marketing Department has stacks of them. A few I suggest you pick up are: Human Services, Health, and Computer Technology. For now I will talk about the one that hits home, the one that represents what I am representing, which is Human Services.
On the cover of our booklet it has your stapled beauty queen, blond, blue-eyed, painfully thin and air brushed to perfection. The title states, “Passionate about Human and Community Services?” Under which is a woman posing three times. The first is a glamour shot, model looks disinterested with her surroundings by wearing an egotistical expression, and the only difference from the first and second shot is that this time she is removing her glasses. In the third pose the girl opens her jacket to a slightly altered Superman symbol with the letter F replacing the well-known Superman logo. I understand the message that is trying to get across about passion; Superman is to stopping bank robbers as students are to helping others, but the truth of the matter is, the picture is just eye-candy being fed to a world with a sweet tooth.
All but a couple of people on the cover of these booklets actually go to Fanshawe. Instead, they come from a modeling agency, which surfaces another point; shouldn't we have students in those programs be the ones representing it instead of an unaffiliated model? I have talked to the people over in Marketing and have confirmed this to be entirely true. Our tuition money is going towards hiring these people to do a job that should be a job for us, the students. I am disappointed with the Marketing Division here at Fanshawe, which is responsible for this fiasco. There needs to be change and that change is letting us, the students of these programs, have a say before they hit the press.
Events like the “Meet Santa and His Naughty Elves”, “Christmas Kick-Ass Country Pub”, all the Naughty Business Events and let's not forget the ever so popular “Sex Toy Bingo.” Posters for events are hardly ever noticed unless they have a “sexy women” on it. It's appealing yet has nothing to do with the event, and if it does have something to do with the event then it's redundant, like how sex ties into something like Christmas. If you want a reason to promote sex then just name your event “Sex, Sex and More Sex Event,” instead of masking sex into just any event.
There has been some students' upset about “Sex Toy Bingo,” saying that it is immoral, unethical and very offensive, which is true only to the “few.” I think the real problem at hand is not the use of the word sex, or the lucid distribution of sex toys, but the applause the host gets for his knows no bounds type of sexist humour. We are not at a point in society where we can freely believe that all is well and equal and making jokes that exploit women just takes away from what many women and men are fighting for - gender equality. You heard the saying “think before you speak,” well same goes for another saying, “think before you laugh.” Events like these are being promoted by your student union, the self proclaimed voice of us all and also the voice that speaks as one; this said together does not make much sense now does it?
Another example of blatant inappropriateness is how our Fanshawe Student Union is selling themselves to the College Student Alliance to win the annual conference bid (CSA, aka the four dollars we pay annually to be a part of, but never hear about). By hiking up their pants, rolling down their shirts and giving the impression of being naked behind the FSU Banner is their ideal idea for successful promotion.
Sex is being used by many different sections of Fanshawe which all in turn in some way, shape or form can be traced back to the Student Union. They are the ones who make events, approve posters, hire entertainers, and have an influential pro Fanshawe leg in the door of the Interrobang. They are at the hub of this problem; however, are not the source, the source is us, the fuel of it is our silence and attendance and if we keep on giving the idea that this is what we want to see in our school or in our society then I am worried nothing will change.
The more I talk about these issues the more I realize how many different people have a strong opinion about it. One point I do want to stress before I end this article is this, you can feel about any issue the way you want to, we do not all have to be ultra conservative or critical thinkers (not like the two go together) to have such a strong opinion about this. We must know our boundary and I feel like it is being crossed on a weekly basis. One question I would like to pose to you all is this, has sex replaced creativity?
by Chris Walker
c_walker17903@fanshaweonline.ca
Human Services Representative
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
