L'Oréal Paris Initiative Warns Against Naturalised Harassment in Audio Visual Content
Reruns are popular in Brazil. Soap operas, series and old movies continue to be very successful on streaming, open and closed TV. However, it is a fact that some of these classics reproduce harassment scenes in a natural way, such as 'funny' lines, stolen kisses that represent passion and that famous 'whistle', considered a compliment.
To raise awareness of these types of content with naturalised harassment, L'Oréal Paris, which has been fighting alongside women for decades, created the 'Educational Classification', an open source platform that helps identify and classify different types of harassment in television content. The initiative is part of the 'StandUp: against harassment in the streets' project, a global awareness and anti-harassment training movement developed by L'Oréal Paris in partnership with the NGO Right to Be, which offers free training to help people intervene safely in the face of situations of harassment, both as a witness and as a victim.
Created by WMcCann, the 'Educational Classification' was based on the 'StandUp' training methodology, which proved to be effective in reducing cases of violence by 17%, and listed eight different types of harassment that could be present in the shows, such as inappropriate comments, inappropriate looks, unwanted gestures, non-consensual touches, public humiliation, among others. With the action, the brand's objective is to follow its commitment to end harassment by taking another step, now against the naturalisation of harassment in the streets.
“With the launch of the ‘StandUp’ platform, we understand that our role goes beyond alerting and talking about situations of harassment on the streets. It is essential to start from education as a promoter of transformation in society. The 'Educational Classification' comes to complement this story, expanding the theme's horizon, showing how actions that were previously taken for granted must now be looked at with care and attention. It works as another form of warning against harassment. L'Oréal Paris has the mission of supporting female empowerment and wants to continue reinforcing the value of each woman on her journey", explains Laura Parkinson, director of L'Oréal Paris in Brazil.
The first shows to go through the classification will be in partnership with Vix, streaming by Televisa, one of the largest soap opera producers in the world, starting Thursday (20). The goal is for other platforms to join as well. Before the content is displayed, an alert appears and an invitation for the public to take the free training available on the 'StandUp' platform.
“We created the 'Educational Classification' by understanding the whole scenario of the brand, which has been using education as a strong weapon to combat harassment. If, in a first moment of the initiative, with the launch of the 'StandUp' training, we had Paywall Down, where we brought clarity on the topics, now we want to show how naturalised harassment in content should also serve as an educational alert. Even because this is very present in the old content”, comments Mariana Sá, CCO of WMcCann.
In addition to alerts when exhibiting works, the project is also offering anti-harassment courses for TV stations, production companies and other streaming channels with the intention of breaking with the perpetuation of naturalised harassment in any type of audio visual content.
