Adbusting at Market Collective

Last weekend, volunteers from Take Back the Night Calgary set up an ad-busting workshop at Market Collective. People were invited to flip through magazines and find advertisements, images and articles that they wanted to “bust.” Busted images were then plastered over the walls.



I organized this adbusting workshop, and I’ve been doing these for about 5 years now. I define adbusting as “Defacing images that are offensive because they portray unrealistic beauty standards, are sexist, classist, homophobic, racist, insulting or demeaning."

Here's what the adbusting workshop looked like:

The workshop drew large crowds and we received so much positive feedback. One woman came up to me and said, “Thank you so much. I really needed to see this.” I think that seeing busted ads helped to remind people that we shouldn’t passively accept images we see in media: we should be thinking about them, what they really mean, and what they’re really telling (and selling) us.



We received over 100 “busted ads” but I can’t post them all here, so below are some of my favourites.

Jennie's Picks: The Best Busted Ads from Market Collective

THIS is beautiful? But it's fake!

Who can compete with Photoshop?

I miss my Mommy

Did you see she has such pretty eyes?

There's more to life than being pretty

That's cool... I'll just wait over here

Women are food? Consume, dispose, repeat.

Remember what food tastes like?