New York City subways are plastered with all sorts of advertisements. Thankfully lately, there have been a number of female-positive ones popping up, like the ones for Thinx — the period panties. However, that hasn’t seemed to stop the barrage of plastic surgery ads everywhere you look.
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The worst are the ones for breast implants. They’re always derogatory, and try to make women feel like no matter what size or shape breasts they have, they’re just not good enough. I’ve seen my fair share of these nasty ads and have never felt more compelled to graffiti something in my life. In this day and age when we’re finally taking such tremendous leaps forward with gender equality, these eyesores feel like an unfortunate retrograde.
That is, until someone figured out how to turn their body-shaming messages into body positive ones. Charles Manning, a writer for Cosmopolitan, started noticing them on his way to work this week. Someone had plastered basic square stickers carrying various body positive quotes all over the most offensive ads. He also noticed there was the hashtag #mybodydoes on the bottom of every sticker, so he decided to check out how far this defacing movement has already come. Here is just a smattering of their awesome work.
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I have abhorred that first ad from the moment I first saw it on a subway platform. Men don’t realize just how many female-specific body-targeted ads there are out there because they aren’t screaming at men to change every aspect of themselves. It’s as if someone took all our deepest, darkest insecurities and announced them through a loudspeaker every hour on the hour. But this little movement is doing what it can to dismantle that, one poster at a time.
My Body Does was started by Jess Andersen and Ashley Simon — two New York yogis who were tired of seeing all this negative focus on female bodies every day — and decided to do something about it. The body positive sticker defacing is apparently just the beginning of the projects they have in store. You can follow them on Facebook and Instagram to stay abreast of their upcoming work. However, if you want to help spread their empowering defacing movement, you can buy their message stickers on their website for $2.50.
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