August begins with another controversial stranded on the shore of the headquarters of the Ministry of Equality. Tuned images of XXL women make up a still life of stolen objects on the beach. In the foreground, the well-meaning, good-natured, adolescent campaign where complexes are exorcised from within. In the foreground, the moralising zeal of an administration that has come to save us all. In the background, the devil-may-care opportunism. Amidst the layers of design that constantly repaint reality, several lies, a crime and the majority consensus: Montero's house and the official feminism of the salon need a reset.
The ministry of claims and viral campaigns has confused transformative politics with make-up. Blusher on inert skin. Beautifier with less life than the effect of deodorant. All plus-size women today feel more marked than ever when they lie on their deckchairs, because the feminism of artificial strategy has put the "X" of utilisation on them with chronic pubescent recklessness. We have naturally assumed that the Women's Institute and its parent company are only a product of content. Content that is more ideological than social. Banners, posters, banners, tweeting polemics. The virus of superficiality spreading its pox on all the real conquests of Spanish women.
Montero's stranded campaign coincides with the recent chain resignation for health reasons of women in public office. Adriana Lastra and her risky pregnancy. Dolores Delgado and the zigzag of her spine. Macarena Olona and her medical history. These are three real examples that tell us in headlines that the working society we live in is progressively becoming a hostile habitat to live in. That in this world we are short of air. That we have stretched our capacities by prioritising efficiency and flaying our bodies and souls along the way. We tend to survive and fall ill in this vital scenario turned into eight thousand in which only hard-boiled women, like Edurne Pasabán, are ready to pull the cart.
We are in heels, but we should be wearing crampons, because all the slopes are getting steeper and steeper. We have clawed our way to equality without prophylaxis. We have fought our way up the career ladder to reach everything without measuring the vertigo. We have undertaken without controlling the difficulties of the system and the weight of wear and tear. We have ended July with our handkerchief out of the window, and we know that next year the inflation indicators will force us to tighten our belts even more. Lastra, Delgado and Olona are just three of the three tips of the iceberg. But it is enough to walk down the street looking people in the eye to understand that this frenetic pace of contemporary societies is undermining us all. We go out. We speed up. We run. We step on each other. We run. We run around the world like headless chickens. We too have landed on this holiday almost by inertia, as if the stop was the only oxygen cylinder that will help us to stop living like zombies.
Against this photoshop-free backdrop, these silly campaigns piloted by the crazy wing of government become sharp-edged pebbles that we tread barefoot through the shifting sands of uncertainty and anger. The Ministry of Equality is a corner of the Metaverse where the real problems are in another galaxy and the real women are increasingly at odds with the hysteria of loquacious cartoon posters. Montero's poster is a perfect metaphor. Advertising disguised as politics that backfires. Once the shot and the blunderbuss have sounded, we feel the fat of difficulties and the cellulite of political marginalisation overflowing. They, they and elles-claim, slogan, guerrilla, blown bridges, detachment, trauma, injury, error - exercise ministerial power by communicating like a landline phone off the hook in one of those empty houses of hope that look at August as if it were heaven and at September, as if waiting for an inferno in flames.
Politics and communication actually have more in common: they are not advertising, they are a public service, and the success of their performance depends on the ability to listen without prejudice. The rest: pure shipwrecks. What a pleasure it is to contemplate the bay in Santander.
Our Managing Partner, Lucía Casanueva, publishes this text in the newspaper Diario El Montañés.