Body check: Why Gisele Bundchen's 3ft-wide butt is nothing to admire in central Hong Kong's Admiralty
Kelly Yang says the myriad billboards in Hong Kong that reduce women to sexual objects send the wrong message to young girls about body image, lowering their self-esteem
Every day, on my way home from work, I walk under Gisele Bundchen's butt. It's a butt you can't miss, about three feet wide, perfectly round, perched atop thigh-high boots in Admiralty. And every time I walk past it, I wince.
I wince for my sons who are eight and five and the future relationships they're going to have with women, having grown up around images like this. I wince for my mother, a serious, no-nonsense woman who left her life in the US to move back to what she thought was conservative Asia, only to have to look at a never-ending stream of crotches, cleavages and rear ends.
It used to be that such imagery was restricted to red light districts, but now, they're on every street corner, shopping mall and MTR stop. These days, you can't swing a cat without seeing a bra. Sex is how we sell everything from water to hamburgers.
We need to get rid of Gisele's bare butt hanging at the top of Admiralty. To me, that ad doesn't sell boots. The only thing it sells is low self-esteem
I get that sex sells. What I don't get is why so many incredibly smart, talented women - people like Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore - would agree to take part in such ads. Can't they see that when they agree to hike up their skirt or undo just one more button for an ad, it's not just all fun and games? They're also participating in the systematic reduction of women to sexual objects.
I know, I know, it's not just women. Yes, I've seen the bare-chested, buff Abercrombie & Fitch guys and who could forget the six-metre-high underwear campaign for H&M.
