“The Status Quo Is Unacceptable”: Meet Fck The Cupcakes, The Organisation Fighting Adland Misogyny

Jasmin Bedir, founder of Fck the Cupcakes, is calling for less icing and more action when it comes to misogyny in the advertising industry. She explains the reasons behind Fck The Cupcakes.

Doing nothing is the only choice that is a bad choice. 2021 wasn’t off to a good start for women in Australia.

The backdrop of systemic misogyny in our own government, the culture of victim blaming, the constant disrespect towards women no matter whether they are co-workers or journos, a PM that showed so little respect and empathy that he needed to ask Jenny, the thousands of incidents of sexual violence in our aged care system, the consent crisis in our private schools, the fact that one woman per week is still murdered by their previous partner … the list goes on.

On International Women’s Day this year, I decided to take a leap. Enough was enough. It was time to give ourselves license to have the conversation about respecting women 365 days of the year – and so Fck the Cupcakes was born, a creative platform to fight casual misogyny in the creative services industry.

I believe the casual misogyny, oppression, and inequality that women are exposed to on a daily basis are so deeply ingrained in our culture’s fabric that most of us don’t even notice anymore.

The accepted narrative that we have to be quiet, that we must not show emotion, that we can only show our contempt with the current status quo within acceptable confinements of one day in the year needs to stop and instead we need to shine a light on these issues every day of the year. We need to give permission to talk about issues without being immediately labelled emotional, angry or unhinged.

You may think of me as being naïve. Misogyny is endemic, a systemic issue requiring long term collective group behaviour change involving men.

My response to that belief: The status quo is unacceptable for me personally.

As someone that is in a position of power and privilege, I feel that I have the responsibility to do something. Even if it’s a small thing to drive positive change.

In the words of a very smart man, Dr Jackson Katz: “don’t do nothing. It’s the only choice that is a bad choice. Remaining silent is a bad choice”.

From talking to a lot of great people in the industry, I realised that I am not the only one that is feeling this way. Which made me think that if we managed to unite a large group of capable leaders in our industry behind this topic, imagine what we could do together?

I truly believe that, as a collective, we are hugely influential and can affect popular culture, language and influence public opinion.

Fck the Cupcakes is inspired by the idea that we need less icing and more action.

It is a place for all of us to surface, discuss and highlight the endemic misogyny in Australian culture and the workplace. Importantly, it’s also a place to champion, celebrate and surface the women and men driving progress, those who deserve the spotlight through the amazing talents they contribute to our creative fields and beyond.

We felt this change was best motivated through creativity. So we have kicked off a launch project, ‘casual wear to fight casual misogyny in the workplace, inviting women in the industry to submit a design. The response has been sensational and the stories behind the designs give great insight into how women in our industry really feel.

This platform doesn’t stop at the end of Project One. Building on the casual wear initiative, we are aiming to keep the conversation alive 365 days of the year. In a constructive way, that gives justice to our anger but also recognises that we require smart stake holder management.

We aim to empower the women around us to find their voice and give them the licence. To speak up. To create practical and tactical campaigns to encourage cultural change in our industry. To develop tactical comms campaigns that make misogyny visible through smart ideas. To look at creative narrative and storylines. To re-define what strength looks like in popular culture. And lastly, to develop actions for women and men in leadership positions to extend the ladder down to women.

We are very excited to work with B&Tas our exclusive media partner for Fck the Cupcakes.

If you want to get involved drop us a line on contact@fckthecupcakes.com.

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Really? I thought B&T was an industry publication talking about industry issues. Unless we've already solved gender equality.

byCharlotte Berry

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1. Really? I thought B&T was an industry publication talking about industry issues. Unless we’ve already solved gender equality.

2. Really? I thought B&T was an industry publication. Seems like it’s a political rag. Unsub.

Fck the cupcakes misogyny