Re: “Letters to the Editor (5/14/14)”

Hello Seven Days -
I'm sure you're tired of hearing loud complaints about the back page adds by American Apparel of your newspaper. We just had several weeks without any offensive adds, but today you seem to push the bar again. Why do you insist? Only because you can? Is the money from American Apparel really that much better than Healthy Living? Can you only accept adds that objectify women (girls)? Don't you have a moral obligation, as a newspaper that seems to thrive on educating us on local issues, to send respectful messages about girls and women? How can you have a paper that rats out 'happy ending' massage parlors, while insisting on sending insulting messages about women? The 'happy ending' of your newspaper is unfitting for a free community paper. Of course it does give us fodder for conversations about the continued exploitation of girls, but when it's the back page at the newstand with an add selling jeans by using a mostly naked picture of a girl, you've crossed the line - we don't need any more fodder, really. Those images are damaging. You could be completely hippocritical and write an article about the objectification of women, using, for example, "Missreprensentation" - or why not take a critical view of what so many of us have ranted about to you for years? And committ yourselves to not wanting to be part of the problem?
Hello Seven Days -
I'm sure you're tired of hearing loud complaints about the back page adds by American Apparel of your newspaper. We just had several weeks without any offensive adds, but today you seem to push the bar again. Why do you insist? Only because you can? Is the money from American Apparel really that much better than Healthy Living? Can you only accept adds that objectify women (girls)? Don't you have a moral obligation, as a newspaper that seems to thrive on educating us on local issues, to send respectful messages about girls and women? How can you have a paper that rats out 'happy ending' massage parlors, while insisting on sending insulting messages about women? The 'happy ending' of your newspaper is unfitting for a free community paper. Of course it does give us fodder for conversations about the continued exploitation of girls, but when it's the back page at the newstand with an add selling jeans by using a mostly naked picture of a girl, you've crossed the line - we don't need any more fodder, really. Those images are damaging. You could be completely hippocritical and write an article about the objectification of women, using, for example, "Missreprensentation" - or why not take a critical view of what so many of us have ranted about to you for years? And committ yourselves to not wanting to be part of the problem? Another idea would be to ask how much we'd be willing to pay for your, otherwise, great paper to not have to be subjected to this kind of objectivity. Would you consider that? You might make out, and the work of instiling ideas of empowerment and subjectivity in our young girls might make out too.
Thanks for reading - again.

Signe Daly
Burlington