Yes, yes, YES! Vibrator adverts are finally coming to the New York subway | Arwa Mahdawi

After a three-year legal battle, there’s something new to break up the posters for boob jobs and erectile dysfunction pills

Boobs to the right of you; phallic objects to the left of you; sexual innuendo in front of you. This, my friends, is a pretty typical subway ride in New York. The chance of your train coming on time is much smaller than the chance of coming across an in-your-face ad for breast augmentation or a trying-embarrassingly-hard-to-be-edgy poster for a dating app.

I’m not complaining about this, by the way. I’m not clutching my pearls here. I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about subway ads because whenever I take the train I do what every normal person does: ignore everything around me and stare at my phone. I’m just bringing this up to provide a little context and demonstrate that the modern New York public transport system is not what anyone would describe as a puritanical environment. The Museum of Sex has had no problem advertising on Gotham buses; erectile dysfunction medication brands have had no concerns about using phallic imagery on subway ads; plastic surgery companies have had little issue papering train cars with cleavage shots. You know who has had a problem getting their ads up, though? Female-focused companies. Thinx, the period-proof underwear brand, had to fight to get ads on New York transit. Women-centred sexual health companies have also been prevented from advertising on trains.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3Hy1bk7