• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, January 26, 2016

Founder and chief creative officer of New York-based advertising and branding agency Badger & Winters, Madonna Badger, has had enough and she's not going to take it any longer. Fed up with the objectification of women in advertising, Badger and her agency are taking a stand.

Badger announced this week that her agency would no longer participate in the creation of imagery that objectifies women; imagery that in her own words, “treats women as props, plastic or sexual body parts.” The agency kicked off the #WomenNotObjects conversation two weeks ago with a YouTube video that has since received over 100,000 views and has started a global conversation. 

Badger, who in the nineties worked on the Calvin Klein campaign that featured nearly naked models, is no stranger to creating campaigns that objectify women, but she's had a change of heart. 

Of the change, Badger said, "We have always made it our business to be deeply empathetic with women’s needs, desires and motivations. But in a world where women’s economic opportunity still only stands at 60% of that of men worldwide, it’s time for us to put a stake in the ground and say no more to advertising that objectifies women where they have no voice and no choice. We know there’s a better creative way to tell a brand’s true story without undermining a women’s value or self-image. As a women-led creative agency, we believe it is our responsibility to affect this issue in the way that we can through our work."

To ensure that her agency's work adheres to her mission, the agency has created a series of questions to be used when working on new assignments. The questions are designed to help craft work which evokes insights about women which are not within the area of objectification.