Sex Sells, but at What Cost?

Just below trendy Deák Ferenc square in Budapest lies a modest installation with a lofty goal: to wipe sexist ads from billboards and kiosks throughout Central and Eastern Europe. The Ads and Gender Project asserts that this one step would change the way women are often treated like sex objects.

Check out the Hungarian website Tűsarok.org for some better examples. It may sound prudish, but many ads are shockingly sexist. That's what the advertisers want, of course, for the consumer to be shocked and aroused. But here's the rub: the European Union has set standards for woman's equality, and Hungary isn't exactly known for stamping out chauvinism. The EU, however, doesn't exactly practice what it preaches. Check out this promo for European film.

This free exhibit steers the boat in the right direction. By speaking through pictures instead of lectures -- which of course are also offered as part of the program -- the viewer understands the dichotomy of real life and consumerism. These artists don't demand change, they ask for it nicely. They don't trample free-speech rights, they suggest advertisers police themselves and find more creative ways to sell their product beyond pasting a 10-meter-tall ass on the side of the street.

Whether or not that's the most effective form of feminism remains to be seen. It would be foolish to adopt another form of feminism when Hungary, along with Poland and the Czech Republic, is such a unique country that has seen so much change in the last 20 years. Many hold violently to "traditional" values and though the woman's movement is about 100 years old here, it's never made much of an impact on fundamentalists. Shocko, shocko...