Brainwashing is sexy

You could almost hear the hallelujahs and quiche-scented whoops of approval, as Christians applauded the carefully crafted statement that was created to achieve just such a reception. Last week the Conservative Party announced that it would be tackling companies who sexualised children in their advertising – and a good thing, too. If you're expecting a cartoon liberal 'I think every nine-year-old needs to learn pole-dancing' response from me, I'm sorry. But I would say this: why stop there? Why limit it to girls? Why not clamp down on all advertising that simultaneously tells women (not just girls) that the most important thing in the world is being sexually attractive and then tells them that they are failing, always falling short in this regard? Why not tackle advertising that tells you, sometimes subtly, sometimes not subtly, that you are a bad mother if you do not wash your family's clothes properly (and by 'properly', I of course mean 'using a specific machine/detergent/softner) or buy certain foods or clean with specific germ-killers? Why not target the adverts that tell a woman that unless she can do the impossible in reversing the effects of something as indifferent and inexorable as the passing of time and the natural biological process of growing older, she will be alone, unhappy, unfulfilled?

Do you want to know why? Because the 'family values' cynically trotted out in statements like this (and, to be fair, in mechanically 'family-oriented' press releases from Labour, too) have everything to do with capturing a section of the vote and little to do with genuine concern for the moral fabric of society. The politicians espousing the proposals may even believe them. But they have not thought very long or hard about them. If they had, they would be honest and say that an advert telling a man that if he does not drive a certain car he is not really a man or that his worth as a human being depends on the clothes he wears and the shoes he owns is far more damaging to our nation's moral fabric than violent computer games or sexy-pre-teen cartoons.

Because the majority of the world's most creative minds are working night and day on advertising that, while it may not sexualise children, tells us that if such products cannot be afforded, we have failed. To be attractive, to be respected, to be happy, to feel comfortable, to be popular and to feel alive, we're told to buy and buy more needless and environmentally unsustainable 'goods'. And politicians focus on the adverts that start ten years too early with their campaign to colonise young women's minds, and they ask us for applause? No. Not until they do the difficult thing, the thing that will offend and horrify their party contributors, whose livelihoods are based on enslaving people to a cycle of debt and overconsumption. Not until they bite the hand that feeds them and attack the majority of advertising as little more than manipulation and brainwashing.

But let's not feel too smug. After all, why do 'family values' get trotted out in Britain and America around election times? Why do politicians kiss babies in a traditional display that, while not actually sexualising children is still frankly creepy? They do it to appeal to us.

Christians have developed a reputation for small-mindedness and stupidity. We supposedly only care about a social ill if it is linked to sexual immorality (don't believe me? How many people-trafficking campaigns have you heard of in your church or Christian media that talk about the numerically huge problem of non-sexual slavery?) or, weirdly, a religious group even more conservative than us. The perception, to be fair, is not entirely just. But it has some basis in fact. And as long as that is the case, we will continue to be played like the dupes we are by politicians and marketers, and our plans for actually making a difference to the society we live in will come to nothing. There is little wrong with addressing sexual immorality. But there are other things to care about, if we care enough to look.

This column appeared in The Baptist Times on 26 February 2010

Jonathan Langley, 26/02/2010