Soft Porn in school

The tween and teen girls in school are sporting various versions of the Hollister 'Hunk' (90s' word alert) on paper bags that they transport their teenage gubbins about in. My objections are threefold.

Firstly I'm a bit of an unreconstructed feminist. If the boys in school were brazenly flashing about 'glamour' pictures of scantily clad females I'd feel obliged to object. Forget all that nonsense about the women making a choice and rejoicing in the body. It's porny and creepy. I live in abject fear of being caught in a double standard, so the bags will have to go I'm afraid.

Secondly, having grown up with a deep and generally unfounded fear that my body doesn't cut the mustard, the proliferation of ANY blatantly airbrushed body 'ideal' in an education setting makes my sensitive little hackles rise. I'd like to do any small thing I can to protect my students from the ridiculous body-image obsession in the world around us. School should be a haven where the pressure is to do something you haven't done before, to learn something previously unknown or to make something you've not made before. The pressure to be like something other than you are should come from parents, and in the future, spouses.

Finally,a practical point: the bags are made of paper. They turn to mush in the rain or the bottom drops out on those days when you've got both PE and cooking. I'm quite tired of forlorn girls sadly sticky-taping over the weirdly shiny groins of headless men.

So, in my view the bags will have to go. I now have a choice. Do I take my concerns to the governers? Let them have a meeting. Then perhaps there will be a meeting about the meeting. A decision will be made about the time that trends have moved on and students are sporting Femidoms as rain hats. The alternative to the ominous 'right channels' is covert brand subversion.

I have discovered that apart from being a brand associated with clothes for the young and beautiful, Hollister is a brand name for a company in an entirely different sector. Still bag related. I think if I can build a synapse connection in these young, malleable minds to these products, the power of branding will eat itself.