The information and views set out in this post are those of the author and do not reflect any official opinion of Esfinges.

 Additional note due to several comments: Esfinges is an Open forum and our ideal is that people get the space to give uncensored free opinions, once again these posts Do NOT reflect the ideas of all the organization but the ones of their owners. Censoring a post would be against our ideals. We have no intention to harm anyone’s Image and we don’t take responsibility for the reaction this post can give to the readers.  Also this post talks about a Situation not an organization.

By Kaja Sadowski

The image on the top was posted on Wiktenauer’s Facebook page this Wednesday as part of their annual fundraising campaign to cover the site’s operating costs. It was shared widely (at least 11 times), before being abruptly removed. There had been some very heated responses to the post from within the HEMA community (along with competing accusations of “PC-ness” and prudery) and the discussion continued on several users’ personal walls after the post came down. There was also a very lively discussion within the Esfinges private Facebook group.

I’d like to talk about the ad more publicly, not to further criticize the Wiktenauer admins for posting it, but to start a broader conversation about advertising within our community and to look at why this ad in particular struck a nerve for many HEMA women. The message an ad conveys comes both from what it shows, and what it’s saying to its audience. In this case, neither one is good.

What it’s showing is a pretty, young woman who doesn’t have anything at all to do with Wiktenauer or HEMA. She’s mostly undressed, and is in a pretty typical cheesecake pose where her arms are squeezing her breasts together to show off her cleavage. It’s obvious that she’s neither holding nor even looking at the book that’s been Photoshopped in front of her, and the hastiness of the editing job only underscores that fact. It’s not like there aren’t pretty, interesting women in HEMA — heck, the current Esfinges group cover photo is full of awesome female fighters in their fanciest dresses holding swords that they know how to use. I bet more than a few of them have read some of the treatises that Wiktenauer hosts as well. But instead of showing a fighter or a historical scholar actually taking an interest in what Wiktenauer provides, the ad’s designer chose a generic girl who’s not doing anything but being attractive. She could be a HEMA practitioner, even a passionate supporter and reader of Wiktenauer, but you’d never know it from the photo.

By making that choice, the ad implicitly tells women who are part of the HEMA community how we should be seen. Not as active practitioners of our martial arts, but as passive objects who are there to be pretty first, and useful second. If that image represents us, then our knowledge doesn’t matter, our fighting ability doesn’t matter, nor does our dedication to our training and study. Just our looks. It’s dismissive, and insulting, and it doesn’t reflect how we see our role within the community at all.

It’s also not a particularly flattering reflection of the ad’s audience. Wiktenauer is an incredibly valuable community resource. It’s a carefully maintained collection of knowledge that would otherwise be inaccessible to most of us. It’s important, and worth supporting based on that fact alone. If we need to be tricked into caring for one of our greatest assets with a completely unrelated picture of a beautiful woman, then we’re in sad shape as a community. It’s insulting to treat the straight men of HEMA as drooling idiots who need a pair of breasts shoved in their face before they’ll actually support a worthwhile cause, but that’s exactly how the ad is presenting its audience.

I’m not upset by the ad because I don’t like to see images of pretty women, or because I’m offended by a bit of cleavage. I’m upset because I expect better from our community, and I’m disappointed to see an ad that paints all of our members — male and female — in such a negative light. How we talk and advertise within the community is just as important as how we present ourselves to the outside world, and it can reinforce or undermine the respect we hold for our fellow practitioners. We can, and should, do a lot better than this.

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Note: After the image was removed, Ben Floyd launched a contest for new banner ad designs for the funding drive. If you’d like to submit an image that reflects the value that Wiktenauer holds for us and how we’d like to see ourselves, you can submit it here.

Regardless of how inappropriate their choice of ad was, the current fundraiser is a worthwhile cause. If you’ve relied on Wiktenauer for your studies in the past, or think you will in the future, you’ve got until the end of the month to donate.

Original Post: http://esfinges1.wix.com/e/apps/blog/advertising-in-hema-beauty-and-banality

(2016 note: After all this situation passed by, Esfinges members gather money and donated to the cause of Wiketnauer altogether)