The debate over the controversial new snowboards from Burton is still going on — check out the ever-expanding comment thread on last week’s Blurt post.
News Editor Brian Wallstin published an update about the boards in this week’s Seven Days.
At least two anti-violence organizations have asked to meet with representatives of Burton Snowboards to urge the company to stop selling product lines that feature nude women and self-mutilation.
Neither of the organizations, the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence and the White Ribbon Campaign of Vermont, a group of men working to end violence against women, has received a response from Burton, which released the controversial boards earlier this year.
We also received an op-ed about the issue from Meghan O’Rourke, a staffer at the CCTV Center for Media and Democracy. You can read it after the jump.
Feminist Culture Critique
by Meghan O’Rourke
A lot has been made of the marketing decision of our local corporate purveyor of youth culture. I want to weigh in on why an issue like this has symbolic importance to so many people, and why the debate and discussion is crucial as the ultimate exercise in free speech.
First, a corporation creates a product. The corporation has to follow certain guidelines that apply to corporate speech and advertising, truthfulness, obscenity and the like. Then consumers get to weigh in, by buying the product or not. And then there are the other folks. The people with free speech rights who get to express their points of view on whatever they want, i.e., political decisions, corporate sales, school board decisions, etc. These folks aren’t the corporation or the consumer, they are another group, with wide and varied opinions who see a situation and respond to it based on their feelings, thoughts, and values. They use the forums available to them (letters to the editor, emails, corner conversations and the like) to say what this particular decision, action or manifestation does to the world they live in as they see it.
Sometimes the issues are obvious and grievous to many, sometimes they are really small but represent a tipping point. The five airbrushed, fleshy pink images are the latter. A tipping point. Enough people saw this and said, jeesh, haven’t we seen enough of this kind of stuff? To me, these images are sexist. Why? Why offensive? Not nakedness; we are all bare under our underwear, how can that be offensive? It’s not women certainly; they make up fifty percent of the human beauty around us. Not even just naked women; no problem there.
The problem is that these boards aren’t just five pictures of naked women. They are overly stylized, airbrushed icons of a time when women’s power was mainly held in between their legs. The problem is that combining this artwork with the marketing language (go ahead and read it yourself at their site — available to anyone regardless of their age) of objectification and dominance tells our teenagers that it is not just okay, but it is COOL to talk about women this way.
Besides just giving me the creeps imagining big clunky boots stomping on these pictures in the cold, it depresses me to imagine my young girl friends out there on the slopes having to put up with a culture that sees no problems with this. And the problem is, that we as women, men, and kids are told that if we don’t like it, too bad. The corporation has the power.
Of course there are bigger issues out there and I am glad that folks care about those issues as well, but every once in a while a symbol rises like a tiny wisp and crystallizes for many the relationships between what so many folks have been thinking. When you objectify women by combining their images with violent and aggressive marketing language, you become part of the culture that condones date rape, abuse and oppression.
When you speak out against this you exercise your fabulous free speech. The best antidote to speech you don’t like is more speech, so let the conversations continue. Maybe we will all learn some things and maybe the culture creators can be inspired to create something different.
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This article appears in The Winter Sports Preview.
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Ok who is not going corporate these days? I even think that the guys making Burton snowboards are going down this road. I used to think they were independent, the I heard that they were owned by mervin. These are the same guys that own those silly department stores. Ahh… there is no way to just be indy these days. Holla if ya hear me.
who gives a fck!!! so they put some naked playmates on a snowboard. ooooohhhhhh nooooo. If somehow they actually sell enough of those boards that you ever see them on a hill or ever hear about them again what dose it matter? is it going to make young adult males think less of wemen? no!!!!!!! most of the teens and twenty to twenty five year olds that buy these boards dont know or care for that matter who these girls are or if they were held back because of sex. they just want a hot naked chick on the bottom of their board to show to their friends. that’s it! young men like naked wemen, it’s a fact of life.
This message is presented to the people who oppose these boards. It needs to be addressed that the images of the playboy models are not nude. Although nudity is classified as unclothed, there is not exposure to what people refer to as “private parts”. Another point that needs to be made. It disgusts me that the worst thing that is going on in your lives and the only thing worth protesting is a snowboard. You all need to look around and become better educated of the true issues in today’s world. The picture of the “mutilation” is in cartoon form. If you want to protest violence then protest the shootings and murders (screenplay) your children see on television and play in their video games. There are bigger issues. Protest something worth protesting.
Imagine my dismay when my eleven year-old son showed me the Burton ad in the opening cover of Snowboard Magazine, December 08 issue. I brought the magazine home as a complimentary shop copy from my local snowboard shop.No, it wasn’t their new line of controversial snowboards that he was pointing to. It was the ad copy that states “What the FU…Is EGD?”Following this was ad content that deliberately attempted to use the Fuck-word in every sentance. 22 instances to be exact!I am ashamed to admit that I am a veteran snowboarder and Burton loyalist since 1984. I helped pioneer the sport accross the nation and specifically in the Eastern Us.I have been a snowboard/Burton evangalist for 24 years. I have lost all respect for Jake Burton, his entire company and the media outlets that perpetuate his ignorance.Jake Burton and company are clearly not a world-class organization. Rather they exemplify the problems of this world and leverage their greed, laziness, ignorance and moral bankruptcy to pollute the minds of consumers. I can only assume that Burton will “justify” his/their marketing as “creative” and “freedom of expression”. Sadly, this shows what has become of this company, a self-absorbed, pitiful organization that has lost it’s soul. You should be ashamed of yourself, Jake Burton. Pretending to have a social conscience and acting out through community programs! Pathetic hypocrasy.The world can be a better place without Burton Snowboards – send the message; boycott them now.