“Sexism in a bottle,” was sprayed in acid green paint on a Coke ad at a bus shelter in the south end of Halifax.

The ad showed a woman’s bejeweled torso with a new, smaller-size bottle. It focused on her bare hips in a pair of super low-rise jeans. God forbid they show her head — the body part bearing her voice and mind.

Even though defacing the bus shelter isn’t an upstanding act, the spray painter had a point.

Sexy parts of women’s bodies are too often cut and pasted, blown up and featured in the media. A powerful global brand like Coke should do something positive to influence people and pop culture, not reinforce scumbag attitudes against women in a scumbag ad.

There’s no question that sex sells. There’s no doubt that it’s worked for Coke in the past. Just look at its accomplishments:

  • It’s the number one global brand, according to the Washington Post. In 2002, Coke sold 307 billion 350mL bottles worldwide — nearly one billion a day.
  • The company boasts its soft drink is available in more than 200 countries. A whopping one billion Cokes are drunk each day. Coca-Cola is the most popular and best-selling soft drink in history.

If Coke is doing this well, why do they keep pushing the capitalist sleaze button? Say the company stopped selling with sex and their sales dropped five per cent? Would it be worth it to Coke, knowing that theyâe(TM)re no longer setting up 52 per cent of the population to be viewed in a way that might hurt them?

If a company is willing to do anything to make a profit why do we support them?

Coke’s legacy has spurred the launch of a new, alternative soft drink company. Mecca-Cola was designed to cash in on anti-American sentiment around the world. It looks like Coke with the red label, but bears the slogan in Arabic, “No more drinking stupid, drink with commitment.”

Mecca-Cola was introduced in France in 2002, and is now exported throughout Europe and the Arab world. Mecca-Cola sells two million 1.5-litre bottles every month in Britain.

“Shake your conscience” is what the company advertises. It donates 20 per cent of its profits to charities. Ten per cent goes to organizations helping Palestinian children. The other ten per cent goes to local charities in the country of sale.

To be fair to Coke, over the past 10 years the company has donated $124-million (U.S.) in scholarships and education programs. It also gives money to charities including Big Brothers & Big Sisters of America and it helps fund an HIV/AIDS program in Africa.

But Coke, being the top brand in the world, needs to take more responsibility. It needs to stop teaching kids — the same kids it’s spending millions to educate — that it’s OK to exploit women. Like the torso ad at the bus shelter here in Halifax.

A few blocks from this Coke ad, two guys beat in a woman’s face and raped her two weeks ago. Around the same time, a guy slammed a girl’s head against the wall in a public washroom and attempted to rape her.

The other night two guys yelled at me: “Get her! Grab her purse!”

Would they yell that at my 6’3″ boyfriend? No, it’s because I’m a woman, an easy target.

A torso in an ad.

Update: The week after this column first appeared, the defaced Coke ad on the bus shelter was replaced by an ad for Advertising Standards Canada. Coincidence or was somebody paying attention after all?