“Mexico is deploying an army of inflatable sex dolls dressed as office executives in a head-turning publicity campaign against workplace harassment of women in the famously macho country. Timed to coincide with International Women’s Day on Wednesday, the advertisements show sex dolls with staring eyes and gaping red mouths dressed in suits and sitting at computers. ‘No woman should be treated like an object. Sexual harassment is degrading and it’s a crime,’ says a voice-over at the end of a television ad, which shows a man walking past one of the dolls and casually stroking her shoulder. Machismo runs deep in Mexico, where it is common for men to have mistresses. Some even set them up in a second home. Women generally earn less than male colleagues and have fewer opportunities for promotion. Inappropriate behaviour towards women in work situations is also not unusual. Mexico’s national institute for women said the ads — which will run on television, radio, print media and billboards from mid-March — were aimed at stirring up controversy and symbolised the use of women as sexual objects.” — Reuters (US)

Here are the two lone pictures of the ad campaign that PervScan could find: a poster and a billboard. The caption reads, “La mujer no es un objeto. El acoso sexual es un delito.” (Women are not objects. Sexual harrassment is a crime.) That’s what the sign says, but the pictures seem to imply the exact opposite. You can imagine the advertisements might have been more effective at dampening machismo if, say, they’d showed regretful faces behind prison bars — men who’d actually been punished for harrassment or rape. Instead, don’t the current pictures basically suggest that office workers are just fuck dolls? That any woman in the workplace has a mouth ready for blow?

The newspaper notes that Mexican President Vicente Fox has “headed a series of campaigns against sexism and other discrimination in his five years in office.” However, the article also notes that this is the same guy who recently called women washing machines with two legs. Evidently Mexican machismo runs deep. It almost makes you wonder if there isn’t an ironic element to these campaigns. Do they criticize sexism at the same time as they promote it, like a girl who says no but means yes?

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