“Tinged with a Feminine Pink”: Adverts, Art and Greenwashing

In the middle of the After the Single Use collaborative workshop in Edinburgh in May, bracketed by discussions of the harms of single-use devices to the environment and the challenges faced in making change, a light-hearted exercise takes place. We are given printouts of adverts for various devices, coloured paper, glue and scissors. The task is to create a satirical advert, a cross between an expression of frustration with the things we see on a daily basis. And as someone who loves a bit of arts and crafts, this is the perfect task for me. 

Inspiration was taken from Darren Cullen, a British-Irish artist and activist who has many projects satirising the nature of advertising, propaganda and greenwashing in the media. He originally studied to go into a career in advertising but disagreed with many of the manipulation tactics and ethical implications. He instead turned the medium of advertising into an artform, twisting the language to focus on the empty promises and harmful narratives often pushed by companies. 

Designing my satirical advert for a single-use vaginal speculum, I reflected on the advertising I had seen from many different companies that designed and sold them. With plastic often described as more comfortable than the cold metal alternative, it’s easy to see why this would be preferred. But a lot is left out when the product is marketed this way. These speculums were often labelled as unbreakable with normal use, something that is true of both plastic and metal speculums, and many even turned towards painting the plastic version as more environmentally friendly due to less energy required for the cleaning process. This ignores the resources needed for the production, sterilization, packaging and disposal of plastic products. There was also a need to show that these products were made for women, with one company advertising their speculum with a “subtle feminine pink tint”, something that made me, a woman who has had a speculum exam and honestly couldn’t care less about the colour of the plastic, rather annoyed. 

I found I could express these frustrations through a satirical advert, titled “A speculum for doctors” and featuring the pink speculum itself, a cut-out of a doctor, male of course, and tag-lines such as, “Throw it away once it’s touched a woman” and “Costs 3x more to dispose of!”

This is not an area where we can make change quickly, but through art and discussions we can become better at spotting the discrepancies. Artists like Darren Cullen are pushing for a greater understanding of what goes on behind the scenes of the companies that create the adverts we see on bus stops, on TV and on social media. It is becoming increasingly harder to read between the lines, to separate the lies from the truth. I have often found myself questioning how much my subconscious takes in what is being fed to us and how to become more aware of this. What better way to do that than through satire and humour.