The city council of Kamloops, British Columbia, placed an ad in its tourism brochure featuring an attractive bikini-clad woman kneeling at the feet of a businessman who was reclining in a beach chair. Accompanying the ad is the message “Where Business and Pleasure Come Together—in Super, Natural High Country, Kamloops, B.C.”
According to the local woman’s resource center, the ad clearly implies that the barely dressed female represents the sexual pleasure, while the almost fully dressed male is mixing a little business with his pleasure.
But Kamloops Mayor John Dormer is having none of that. “To me, it’s a non-issue and I don’t think members of the general public would be offended either. It’s tastefully done, and the complaints about it are ridiculous.” And a majority of the aldermen are hanging tough, too. They like the ad because it is “eye-catching,” although a minority, including the lone female member of council, find it “offensive.”
It is of great interest to contrast this case with a superficially similar one which took place in Vancouver a few years ago. At that time, Eaton’s department store had placed an exhibit in its sidewalk window that was also deemed sexist by spokespersons for the local feminist movement. (It featured a male doctor manikin holding a probe aimed at the crotch of a female patient manikin.)
But in the aftermath of the protest, all similarity between the two cases dramatically disappears. Eaton’s management, instead of stonewalling, and insisting upon maintaining its vision of propriety, caved in with alacrity. Within a matter of hours, the offensive exhibit was withdrawn, to the accompaniment of profuse apologies.
How can we explain the two very divergent reactions? At first glance, this would appear to be exceedingly difficult, since both protests were undertaken by much the same people, feminists, objecting to essentially identical occurrences.
The difference lies not in the offense, nor in the identity of the protestors, but in the people against whom the complaint was made. In Kamloops, the perpetrators of the transgression are part of the public sector; in Vancouver, they were a private business. As such, they are confronted with very different incentives:
• The Kamloops mayor and Council do not have to face voters in the polling booth for another few years; Eaton’s, in sharp contrast, had to face its “dollar” voters the very next day, and every day thereafter.
• On that far-off day when the politicians shall finally be called upon to defend their actions, they will be judged not only by how well they acquitted themselves in this one case, but by how well they collected the garbage, filled the pot-holes, ran the recreation centers, distributed patronage, conducted library services, etc. In addition, if they are telegenic, or particularly well spoken, they will effortlessly be able to explain away their acts.
• In sharp contrast, the shoppers could easily focus their entire dissatisfaction on the businessmen they held responsible. Nor could the latter squirm out. All the protestors needed to do was to patronize a competitor. This potential threat was more than enough to quickly bring to heel the capitalists who owned Eaton’s.
The point of this little civics lesson is that we as consumers are able to exercise a far greater degree of control over private businesses, even though we do not own them, than we can exert over politicians, despite the fact that we are theoretically their employers and they ostensibly act in our behalf. Paradoxically to some people, the marketplace is far more responsive to our needs and desires than is the cumbersome and inefficient political system.
We can easily see from these two cases that if feminists truly had the interests of their constituency at heart, they would urge a greater role for the private sector. Instead, their biases run toward more government intervention. This is highly unfortunate from the perspective of those of us who favor the goals of the women’s movement, if not their means.
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Chronicle Journal (Thunder Bay, Ontario), December 17, 1988.