The worst cervical cancer campaign ever...

'Gender affirming hysterectomy'!

And by 'undiverse' I don't just mean colour. They all look young, slim, hairless, and probably with very similar sense of personal style.

Ah thanks for the legs clarification. I thought someone had done an Anthony Gormley. Because this campaign is so batshit nothing would have surprised me.

Tbh, I’m reading that as ‘the budget was too small to get actual models, so we used the design team instead’.

The legs are apparently those of women who worked on the ad, not models.

They’re not models in the conventional sense. Apparently it’s the design team’s legs.

That's a very undiverse set of legs.

models often don't know what the ad is for they are posting for.

unless it's an obvious clothes label.

Good to know that the director of the firm that created the campaign thinks the strapline is 'perfect'. Despite snowballing evidence to the contrary.

Lovely work from the DM reporter (now there's a line I don't type very often!) with that choice of first quote directly heading off "but they're all anti trans" objections.

These legs.

It’s still the case that women who are happy to be leg models for a ‘don’t keep them closed’ campaign are probably outliers in the population of women as a whole.

If anyone asked me to get my legs out to be photographed for work purposes, I would not be saying yes!

Thanks for letting us know that the page and the tweets have gone. I would expect that the negative responses outweighed the positive responses, and perhaps the CEO or the board chair has decided that this was certainly not a successful start to a major campaign and decided to go into damage control.

If there was no merit in what people were feeding back, the page and the tweets would have remained. However, this was very clearly a failure even just in the polarised responses. A successful campaign from a charity trying to convince potentially vulnerable women to attend an incredibly sensitive appointment was never going to be polarising in dismissing women’s needs and feelings.

https://archive.li/qcufN

Had a look at the comments. It's unmoderated 😳

Clarification about the legs. If you go to the North West CR webpage that was taken down, the text is broken up with photos of women's legs sticking up in the air.

It's those pictures that are meant. I'm trying to archive an old version of the page now, so you can have a look.

Just so you know, the tweet and the webpage have been deleted.

I noticed the tweet had been taken down.

Clearly NWCR aren’t feeling that all publicity is good publicity. Being compared to benny hill in the DM probably hasn’t gone down brilliantly with their trustees.

So those legs are supposedly representative of everyday women then? I thought they were generic manikin legs.

Why are these people in their jobs? How is it more relevant to the ad agency that women at the ad agency liked the campaign they were doing than whether the target audience found it encouraging?

Just so you know, the tweet and the webpage have been deleted.

https://nwcr.org/dontkeepemcrossed/

That’s basically a summary of choice feminism. It works for me; how dare you even suggest that I might consider the effects that my choices might have.

Oh, I didn't read the comments. Tra la la! <skips off to look>

By "their legs" they mean women's legs.

So "Look, look, wr're centring women".

Though not in their actual messaging, where they still can't use the word 'women' to refer to those who might suffer from cervical cancer.

queer theory is intrinsically misogynist and lesbophobic.

Ain't it just.

And racist, ableist and ageist.

And Colonialist. And snobbish.

Hence the 'well I'M fine with it' comments. Which imply that anyone not like the speaker isn't worth including or protecting from cervical cancer anyway. Not like lesser beings matter.

Whenever women say that the queer theory approach doesn't work for them, you can bet some woman will immediately say 'well it works for me, so I don't see the problem'.

And there, right there, is the problem.

Our campaign was designed by women, led by a woman and it is their legs that feature in the photographs supporting the work

It’s almost as if they haven’t in any way recognised that the women who designed and led this campaign may not represent all women. And that a lack of awareness about this might be a very big problem.

Let’s face it, the group of women who are quite happy to have their legs photographed and displayed in a sexualised nudge nudge, wink wink advertising campaign under the slogan ‘don’t keep them shut’ represents a pretty small subset of women in the UK who are eligible for the cervical screening programme. Which would be fine if those women showed any awareness that others may feel very differently to them and those different feelings will translate into very different outcomes for the campaign.

Our campaign was designed by women, led by a woman and it is their legs that feature in the photographs supporting the work

Their not her?

So, somewhere, there are three women designers, working for the same firm, with identical legs to each other, but different skin tones, elegantly slim, long, and uncankled?

Or do they mean that one woman had her perfect legs copied into different skin tones, as some kind of vanity project?

How much did that cost then out of the donations of good people? I really would like to know.

A spokesperson for North West Cancer Research said: 'One in three of the people in the North West who would benefit from a cervical cancer test are not coming forward. The evidence shows that, even with the very best intentions, the existing NHS testing campaigns are not achieving their aims in our region

Neither is this campaign.

Much better ideas on this thread from women who have given this great thought, and for free!

And some of the smutty comments that have been posted in response demonstrate perfectly exactly the type that women will overhear in the station

And queer theory is intrinsically misogynist and lesbophobic.

I haven't had a smear for years, mainly because when I did go for them the nurses nearly always gave up because it was hurting me so much. I only had 2 where they actually managed it, I think. This was at a range of different surgeries so it was very much me not them.

The nurse who tried last time suggested that since I was single, lesbian & had no genetic red flags, it wasn't worth the stress for me and I'm in the upper age range for them now anyway.

I know perfectly well that I have a cervix and I could make the time for an appointment. If I was going to be persuaded it would be by an ad explaining that the woman doing my smear would be understanding and skilled and go at my pace. This crossed legs crap would just confirm to me that I'm right to stay away.