A TV ADVERT for a coffee drink has been slammed by the Socialist Women’s Movement for promoting sexist images and messages.
The head of the Movement, EDEK MP Roulla Mavronicola, issued an announcement on Wednesday condemning the Coffee Break ad, which she said projected images and messages that “insult women and society itself”.
The advertisement, she said, has a clearly sexist content, which moves in the direction of projecting women as sexual objects and nothing else.
The ad in question shows an elderly woman in need of CPR after being rescued from the sea, with no one willing to administer First Aid. An actor comes along and drinks a Coffee Break and suddenly the elderly woman turns into a beautiful model. He administers CPR and saves the day. He then turns to the TV screen and says: “That’s how I saw her”.
Mavronicola said efforts were continually underway to achieve real gender equality in Cyprus and a lot of progress has been made so far.
“We feel the specific advertisement is unacceptable as it is a step backwards and doesn’t comply with new social realities, which we are trying to embed in the European Cyprus of the 21st century,” said Mavronicola.
Mavronicola said she had already sent a letter to the Cyprus Radio Television Authority calling for it to intervene, and even belatedly, withdraw the specific ad; “something we feel should have already happened after an independent intervention”.
“I am waiting for a reply,” Mavronicola said yesterday.
Furthermore, the MP said the matter had been submitted to the House Gender Equality Committee for discussion in two weeks’ time.
“The issue has been scheduled for discussion in a fortnight, in the presence of the Radio Television Authority, the Journalists’ Union and media representatives but more importantly, the advertising companies,” Mavronicola told the Cyprus Mail. “The important thing is to try and engrave the correct mentality in the minds of advertisers.”
The EDEK MP said she was in the process of examining the relevant laws and exact powers the Authority has to intervene. “We are looking into the law to see how independently the Authority can intervene and if there are loopholes, we will see how we can amend the law,” she said.
The Coffee Break ad was just the tip of the iceberg, said Mavronicola. “We just felt that this was one too many; we have reached a point where the situation is uncontrollable.”
