UK Retailer Shows Women How To Avoid Looking Cheap After Sex

British retail chain Harvey Nichols has launched a new ad campaign this holiday season—and it’s full of latent misogyny.

The ad opens with women exiting apartment buildings looking embarrassed and sad—a few are even walking the streets without their shoes on. Strangers stare at them; these women are clearly ashamed.

But then Harvey Nichols, clothing maker and problem solver, shows women the only way to avoid the walk of shame—by buying Harvey Nichols clothing, of course! And that’s how, the ad implies, a walk of shame turns into a stride of pride.

The women doing “the walk of shame” and the woman who takes “the stride of pride” at the end of the commerical are not the same. The “shame” women are wearing cheap, ill-fitting, torn clothing. Some are not thin. But the “pride” woman is thin, beautiful, and wearing an expensive dress. (Most of the dresses that Harvey Nichols’ website recommends to avoid the walk of shame are $1,000—some cost even more.)

“Walk of shame” is a pop-culture term describing the walk home after spending the night at someone’s house; the term is loaded with sex-negativity (a term coined by psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to refer to the attitude that sexuality is inherently bad and should be repressed), especially for women. It’s very rarely used to describe men’s walk home—the assumption being that women only return to men’s apartments, not the other way around, and that any male walk of shame would inherently be a walk of pride.

Taking the stereotype even further, the ad characterizes these women as promiscuous drunks with no class—unlike the women who shop at Harvey Nichols. It also indicates that sexually-active women should hide that fact because it’s something to be ashamed of.

Harvey Nichols is also sponsoring a Twitter campaign and contest based on their “Walk of Shame/Stride of Pride” ad, encouraging women to share their very own Walk of Shame in order to win a Stride of Pride prize—most likely an outfit that Harvey thinks won’t betray your sexual activity or class quite as much. A Twitter search for the keywords “Walk of Shame” revealed several users complaining about the ad and a lot of jokes agreeing with its sentiment.

Harvey Nichols isn’t the only company invested in telling women that their sexual activity is something to be ashamed of and offering tips on how to hide it.

Alluremagazine features an article this month called “Holiday Party Beauty: How to Handle the Walk of Shame” shares tips for how to cover up the telltale signs that you’ve had sex the night before. What is this, The Scarlet Letter? What telltale signs?

No surprise that the article praises the Harvey Nichols ad, describing it as “hilarious scenes of women walking home in the cold light of dawn.” In terms of advice, Allure is quick to warn that “smudgy eyeliner and messed-up hair are still a dead giveaway that you didn't spend the night in your own bed. Here are our top tricks for fooling the neighbors.” How about the idea that it’s none of your neighbors business what you do with your free time?

Spare us the slut shaming and classism, Harvey Nichols et al. There are better ways to sell a dress than by insulting and demeaning your entire customer base. 

Dahlia Grossman-Heinze is a staff writer for Campus Progress. Follow her on Twitter @salvadordahlia.

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