The advertising firm RKCR have recently devised a campaign entitled ‘still red hot’ to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Virgin Atlantic’s 1984 launch. RKCR attempt to invoke the spirit of 1984 by depicting news paper headlines of the miners’ strike and a yuppie talking into a early edition ‘brick’ mobile phone. They move swiftly on to their portrayal of Virgin Atlantic stewards of whom all are apparently (you guessed it) young, thin predominantly white women, (token non white women is placed out front but given minimum coverage) and happy to be flouting their sexual allure to the gawping predominately white male bystanders. As with so much unimaginative media today, this ad hides its bigotry under its ‘retro’ theme, safely tucking itself into a time when women workers were unprotected from sexual harassment in the workplace. In so doing; RKCR and Virgin promote a work culture where women are demonised if they do not measure up to sexist stereotypes of femininity and often subject to harassment if they do. The representation of workers as providing sexual gratification for others not only promotes workplace harassment but a culture whereby people are expected not only to be proficient at what they do but are tacitly expected to ‘please’ clients in other ways, (i.e. wearing make up, tight outfits, not objecting to harassment etc). It is a dark day when workers and women’s rights are so degraded, particularly as the early 1980’s was a time when women and workers all over the world were fighting for anti discrimination and sexual harassment laws to be implemented, lest we forget. The steward’s role as a valued professional member of staff and the occupation of service industries that are predominately made up of a female workforce are completely devalued here. This is made explicit within the advertisement when the line of young white airline stewards come face to face with older less glamorised women stewards and the viewer is left to surmise that these women have been included in the add to represent the staff of Virgins competitors. The script writers make this point clear through the dialogue given to a gawping white male onlooker as he states that he ‘need(s) to change (his) ticket’. Are Virgin seriously stating that they can and will guarantee that ‘their’ female stewards do, or will be made to, conform to these representations? Were the Virgin steward staff consulted by RKCR and Virgin as to how they would like to represented within the media? The value and position of everyday working women is dangerously reduced here to providing men with sexual titillation. Of course RKCR and Virgin will claim that this is all in jest and if you don’t get the ‘joke’ you’re a part of the P.C. gone mad brigade. What is truly disrespectful is how painful this advertisement could be for the existing Virgin Atlantic steward workforce who have not only had their occupation so reduced by their superiors but who will now be inevitably sized up by passengers and compared to these deplorable representations. And as if that isn’t enough, RKCR have received advertising contracts from the Home Office for their anti Prostitution, Domestic Violence, Child Protection on the Internet and Anti Rape campaigns as well for Oxfam! Just what the RKCR add for workplace harassment would be like makes the mind boggle.