The Challenge:
The aim of this brief was to explore ethics and politics through a new referendum that was taking place. The aim of the design work was to advocate on a given topic and influence behavioural change. The overall, task was to design material for an undecided audience. Throughout the process, as a designer, you are also analysing your ethical impact on how you ‘influence’ or ‘manipulate’ voters.
Response:
This was a four week project whereby, Shannon and I where given the social issue of whether ‘sex work in the UK should be legalised?’ This was a very controversial topic with many people sharing the perception that anyone who follows this career has no self-respect or is seen as not having a ‘proper job’. It was this stigma that inspired us to create our campaign, ‘Sex work, is work’. In using that one simple line we had made a clear statement. For our design deliverables we wanted an advocate for our campaign message. We were heavily inspired by the doll “Barbie”, as she also had a negative image from her past and was trying to be a 21st all inclusive doll. Barbie had several different careers in her past and in the 80s she even came out with the slogan ‘girls can do anything day to night’ So who better for an advocate? However, we specifically wanted a ‘sex worker’ doll and Barbie just wasn’t the name sex workers could relate to. So we created the sex worker doll, ‘Roxxxy’.
Roxxxy breaks the stigma of sex work not being real work by having her own LinkedIn account, she’s in Newspaper job ads and she has her own article section in the Cosmopolitan. She is aware of her objectification as she even makes the statement ‘Not your doll’ on her tote bag merchandise. Overall, our aim was to influence voters by giving them a user story. Roxxxy does sex work because she wants to. But she would be much safer if you voted for legalising sex work.
