Ad Standards Board rules a Fremantle hotel ‘ball and chain’ billboard is sexist
The Ad Standards Board has ruled against a billboard advertising a Fremantle hotel as it was found to be sexist against women.
The billboard for Hougoumont Hotel in Fremantle had an image of a woman’s body in which the face is covered by a three mast tall ship, alongside a yellow blob of paint with an “old style” ball and chain attached to the woman. It is accompanied by the text ‘Room for you and your ball and chain’.
Complainants argued the outdoor ad objectified women and suggested that the ad implies that a woman now only has the right to be allowed in the public sphere of the Hougoumont Hotel.
“The ad objectifies women. The woman, for one, has only part of her body showing, her face unimportant and covered by a ship (no doubt an artistic attempt at relating to Fremantle). It suggests that a woman is an annoying weight a man has to drag around,” the complainant continued.
PC is a curse, it makes any kind of thought outside the square either sinister or square depending upon the limits of the beholder and subsequent complainant.
Ball and chain was the part of a man’s wife that retarded his wandering or pub hours.
Ball and chain was also the pub or the gaming house or whatever vice held him back from family life. It is a simile, not a pejorative.
Like mother in law jokes, which were never accurate descriptions of mothers in law, neither were they an accurate description of the relationship that each married man had with the mother of his wife.
They were a recognisable, obvious facet of the likely archetype of a mother in law.
They also worked both ways for husband or wife.