The billboard of a woman’s bum outside Lidl is misogynistic and archaic

In celebration of fitness and exercise, Cardiff branded a woman’s bum outside a local supermarket on Sunday.

The mobile billboard was displayed during Cardiff’s Half Marathon – a family friendly event attended by hundreds of people. There’s really not a better way to promote a healthy lifestyle than images of people working out.

The gym advertisement read: ‘There’s better things to be stuck behind than the car in front’.

But is the only thing indicative to a healthy lifestyle the overt sexualization of women? No, it is not.

One of the managers at UFit Fitness attempted to defend the poster. Apparently it wasn’t intended to be “sexist” or “derogatory”. By now you would hope that companies have learnt not to marginalise people purely based on looks. Instead we have a perfect description of everything this poster represents.

This advertisement advocates and moralises men’s ability to leer, and god knows what else, over a woman’s body. Especially after Cardiff has already received backlash from last year’s ‘Ride me all day for £3’ stamped on a half-naked woman.

There is no promotion of a healthy lifestyle. It does not encourage a woman to go to the gym. If anything it strikes fear in one as the thought of the work you put into your arse is only for some fat truck driver sitting in traffic by the Woody.

This kind of overt sexualisation of women is particularly insensitive when considering three sexual assaults took place on Cardiff’s main roads last year.

We have protested these kind of misogynistic attitudes with multiple ‘Reclaim the Night’ events, yet the attitude evidently remains the same.

The basic fact is that this poster would be shameful anywhere within the UK, but considering the amount of marginalisation women have already put up with in Cardiff it is just crass, insensitive, and uncaring.