Do better.

Since the start of lockdown I've been having some work stuff delivered to my house. Mostly huge boxes of records but on this occasion it was something for my boss - he was being sent a poster for his favourite film and when it arrived this morning, he asked me to open the package and send him a photo of the contents.

The innocuous film poster was present and correct, but  the generous screen-print company had added a few extra "gifts" in!

Let me describe them...

Poster 1 :
Image : A naked woman riding goat.
Purpose : Poster for an all male band. 

Poster 2 : 
Image : A topless woman.
Purpose : Concert poster for a band with a really bad name created using "Generic Stoner Rock Name Generator".

Poster 3 : 
Image : A woman laid on her back, head tilted back as if passed out, with a dress pushed up so that she is naked from the waist down.
Purpose : Concert poster for an all male band whose frontman was accused of raping a woman in her sleep only the previous year.

Poster 4 : 
Image : A woman's legs shown from the knees down, red painted toes, passively hanging as if dead,  covered in blood.
Purpose : Concert poster for an all male band.

Poster 5 : 
Image : A closeup of a woman's face overlaid with a pram and the text "Pray For Her Baby". The woman in question was a real human being who was brutally murdered along with her unborn child.
Purpose : "Jokes".

Earlier this morning, I had been feeling good, positive about making music and regaining my health enough to do so... When I opened this package I just felt sick and sad.

Isn't it time to move on from this kind of imagery? At best, it's lazy and misogynistic. At worst, it's dangerous and misogynistic. I think it's both.

As a woman who has been playing and attending gigs for twenty years, I am not ok with the portrayal of violence against women as something to sell tickets to gigs by boring boy bands with mostly male audiences. Why should I be?

I want you to know that every time I see this kind of shit on display in your venue, or your studio, or on your band's shirt, on your psych-fest poster - I lose some respect for you. Because I know you don't respect me. 

We can do better than this and it's well overdue.