When Jasmin Bedir, CEO at Innocean Australia, launched Fck The Cupcakes back in 2021, she said the move had been a long time coming.
“I started taking over Innocean during a period when Australia was like a total sh*t show, right? I mean, we had inequality coming to the surface everywhere – businesses, parliament, local companies…. I think a lot of women were angry, and I was particularly I was very angry”.
Despite the anger, creating change was not something she felt like she had the power to do in the past.
“I’d never felt like I had the privilege to do anything. And with that, I actually mean power.”
Eventually, however, she had to act.
“I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror anymore, and kind of like tolerate what I saw. So I just thought, I felt like I had to do something”.
With that, Fck the Cupcakes was born. The initiative aims to use creative communications to fight endemic misogyny. It is unique that it invites men into the equality conversation, which Bedir says is often the missing puzzle piece when it comes to inequality.
Whilst there has been a lot of focus on inequality, Bedir says there is not yet a clear model of what healthy masculine looks like.
“I just don’t think that exists just yet. So I’ve got a lot of empathy for men. To be honest, I didn’t have that for a really long time. But if you look at what’s going on, women have been talking to each other for a very, very long time, right?”
“We have tools as to how to give warmth, and, you know, nurture each other’s mental health”.
“Men don’t have that. But in particular, in Australia, in a young country, I think we’ve got a very high rate of suicides, male suicide, it’s really quite, it’s quite shocking. I think the answers are really complex, and no one has worked it out”.
Despite the positive intention of Fck the Cupcakes, the campaign has received its fair share of hate. Recently it was a target of a misogynist hate campaign on Reddit which Bedir says shows how much women hate still exists.
Despite the critics, Bedir is clear on who she is trying to reach with the campaign. She says she does it for the “amazing” male “movable middle”.
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Key Dates
Entries open: Thursday 13th April 2023
Entry deadline: 11:59pm AEDT, Monday 5th June 2023
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Judging period: Monday 19th June – Monday 17th July 2023
Shortlist date: Friday 21st July 2023
Early bird tickets end: Friday 28th July 2023
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