Empowering Women In Their Underwear

On August 22nd, Time, as well as other online publications later on, picked up on the story of a recent campaign by online underwear company Dear Kate.  The campaign features several women, identified as prominent women in tech coding, doing their jobs while dressed in only some of the underwear on sale by Dear Kate.  Some people have found this ad to be objectionable, with one tech blogger being quoted as saying “Posing in your underwear undermines the message that you aim to be taken seriously as a technologist,”.

The campaign can be found here, and, as someone who often spends parts of his mornings watching online pornography, in my opinion these pictures aren't particularly titulating.  This campaign features women in a staged office situation doing the things that they would do in their jobs.  The difference is that they are doing so in their underwear, and that is where the problem is.  Other than the fact that these were pictures taken by an online underwear company in order to sell underwear online, why are these women in their underwear?  It's not like these women regularly do their jobs wearing only their underwear, so why are they in their underwear?  There doesn't seem to be any legitimate reason for it, other than to garner attention due to the distinct possibility that people will object to it-- wait, that's it!

The point of any promotional campaign is to get attention for the product that you are promotion.  If the product doesn't get attention than the campaign fails.  In that way, this campaign is successful.  I mean, I don't remember ever hearing of Dear Kate before, and I spend a lot of time online looking at women in their underwear.  This campaign has also gotten the attention of people who object to women being objectified, as well and the people who object to people objecting to women being objectified.  This campaign probably got the attention of a lot of people who might be motivated to act with their dollars and support or not support this company.  Now the real question: Did this campaign result in increased sales?  We'll have to see.