A group of women at the University are assembling a protest against mail chauvinism.
Members of the community are gathering signatures to file an official complaint against a March advertisement sent by the Duke University Health System to all Duke employees touting its plastic surgery services.
The flyer, which features a toned woman with bee-stung lips wearing an all-white outfit, offers all University employees and their family members a free consultation and a 10-percent discount on cosmetic surgery at the Duke Aesthetic Center. It struck a negative chord with many of the employees who received the ad.
"We felt like we couldn't sit by and not do anything about it," said Senior Assistant Librarian Amy Leigh, who is organizing the petition.
Leigh and other members of the Women's Colloquium, an organization of female employees and graduate students, are currently collecting electronic signatures for a petition objecting to the tone and content of the advertisement.
"Your flier encourages the objectification of women, pathologizes aging, and creates a false need for 'services' such as 'body contouring' and 'rejuvenation,'" the petition reads.
The advertisement came during Women's History Month at a time when campus attention was concentrated on the high-pressure environment for women at the University. The Women's Initiative, released in September 2003, found that undergraduates in particular found Duke to be a place that demanded physical perfection.
Richard Puff, associate director of the Medical Center News Office, said he could not comment on the petition because he had not seen it. He noted, however, that the advertisement is no longer in use.
The advertisement was originally intended as part of a larger promotional publication, said John Burness, senior vice president for public affairs and government relations. "The ad, out of context, looked very different in another kind of publication," he noted.
Sharon Sullivan, director of personnel services for Perkins Library, said people in her department were so outraged about the flier that she felt compelled to respond to the depiction of women and the implication that the cosmetic surgery was a sensible option.
She acknowledged that the reaction was probably intensified by the recently published Women's Initiative but noted that that the advertisement would have generated a negative response even in other contexts.
"The flyer is especially troubling in light of the Women's Initiative and the identification of 'effortless perfection' as an issue to be addressed," Sullivan's letter reads.
Petition organizers said they did not feel harassed by the ad, just disconcerted. The current protest focuses on DUHS's reaction to Sullivan's letter as well as the content of the ad itself. "They pretty much twisted our complaint into a marketing tip," Leigh said.
Leigh called the response from Patricia Deshaies, marketing and communications manager for the department of surgery, "insulting."
"Although over 90 percent of patients receiving cosmetic surgery at Duke are female, you have raised a good point that we should broaden our promotional efforts to include a more diverse population," Deshaies' reply stated.
Protest organizers said they want to generate greater sensitivity from Duke's public relations officers about the effect advertisements can have on gender issues, but they are demanding no concrete action.
"I think it's too late to undo what this flier has done," Sullivan said.
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