Madonna Badger made a name for herself in advertising, but was propelled into the national spotlight for the most tragic of reasons. Now she is in the spotlight again and it's for trying to change the world of advertising by committing to not objectifying women and asking others to do the same.
She appeared on the “Today Show” on Tuesday morning and revealed that her New York agency, Badger and Winters, launched the #WomenNotObjects campaign and the viral video meant to help end the objectification of women in advertising.
She said the idea came about between 2007 and 2009, during the “Women’s Wear Daily” beauty summit and a discussion about innovation in marketing and what that means. What it means, in part, is not shaming women to aspire to something unattainable.
“(I)nnovation in marketing is really getting inside of the shoes of your consumer, and it’s no longer this old paradigm of filling the consumer with shame and anxiety – you know, you’re not good enough, hair’s not right enough – and then solving the problem,” Badger said.
Badger’s life took a dramatic and painful shift in 2011, when her three young daughters, Lilly, 9, and 7-year-old twins, Grace and Sarah, as well as her parents, Lomer and Pauline Johnson, were killed in a fire.
During the dark days that followed, Badger moved away from her home in Connecticut and work in New York stayed with a friend in Arkansas. During a prior "Today Show" appearance, she said love helped get her through the painful time.
Then, in the summer of 2014, Badger got married to William Duke, her college friend.
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The latest chapter is her life is the #WomenNotObjects campaign and she said she anonymously released the now-viral video on YouTube earlier this month that shows models posing with advertisements that objectify women and delivering the demeaning messages displayed in the ad.
“I love sacrificing my dignity for a drink,” one model says.
“I’d sell my body for a burger,” another says.
“Obviously, my cleavage can sell anything,” another says.
It is the type of ad depicted in the video that Badger said her agency is opposed to and the reaction to the video has been “huge,” Badger said.
It’s been seen in more than 167 countries.
“The comments are incredible. People are really seeing that objectifying women is really up there with inequality of women,” Badger said.
This morning, she reinforced her agency’s mission.
“As an agency, we have made the decision that we will never use women as a prop, where she has no choice, no voice. We will never over-retouch to the point that it is unattainable human perfection and we’re not going to use her body parts,” Badger said.
During the interview, Matt Lauer asked Badger if she thinks that she can get the rest of the advertising industry behind her in a world where you hear over and over again that “sex sells.”
‘We’ve seen enough incidences of sex not selling, of people actually pushing back and saying ‘no, this does not fit within my value system,” Badger said. “The worst part is the harm that we are doing. For me, that’s really what made me make this decision.”
Learn more about the campaign on the Women Not Objects Facebook page or through the Twitter account.
