Shari Graydon sgraydon@uottawa.ca

You may recall that a month ago I sent out an email with a link to a website ostensibly promoting a credit card offer that included free implants. The following press release -- and the news coverage that it's continuing to generate -- provides the background context.

I apologize in advance if you were offended by the rather unusual strategy, and hope you conclude that the end -- to promote increased awareness of the under-reported negative impacts of breast implants on women's health and welfare -- justified the means. Means which were especially designed to reach younger women, via the 'net.

This week, the story has been covered by 11 Canadian daily newspapers, CBC radio (BC), CKNW radio (BC), CFRB (Toronto), Global TV (golden horseshoe area of Ontario), CTV (Toronto), a California rock station and CBC Newsworld (to air nationally on Sunday at 7:45 am EST, with possible repeats later on).

Please visit the site again (http://www.plasticassets.com), and click on the testimonials link, which will trigger the banner, which will link you to the statement and educational links. And if you think the message is worth sharing, given the quarter of a million women every year who are undergoing implant surgery, please pass it on.

Best wishes,

Shari

Free implants credit card offer dupes thousands, demonstrates need for media literacy, wins Huffington Post contagious media festival

4 April 2006. New York, NY: The women responsible for http://www.plasticassets.com are depressed) to announce that their website has engaged, outraged and duped tens of thousands of visitors in its first month on the net. In the process, it has decisively won the March Huffington Post Contagious Media Festival. (http://cf.huffingtonpost.com)

Initiated by Shari Graydon, award-winning author of In Your Face - The Culture of Beauty and You, the satirical site was created by The Panty Raiders, a group of women artists who ambush the Internet. The site ostensibly offered free breast implants to young women who signed up for the fictitious Plastic Assets credit card.

Launched on March 1st, it received more than five times as many hits as its nearest competitor. The site's viral potential clearly benefited from its stacked deck: the inclusion of photographs of young women spilling out of their shirts, and the slogan "Invest in your breasts."

Hundreds of women attempted to take advantage of the combination offer of the low-fee credit card and "new breasts". Many others were shocked and appalled that a company would seek to exploit women's body image insecurities in this way.

Says Graydon, "We created the site as a means of drawing attention to the under-reported negative impacts of breast implants on women's long term health. Tens of thousands of teenage girls are implanting foreign devices of questionable safety into their still-developing bodies, risking their future health and wealth in the process.

"The fact that so many were duped by plasticassets.com underlines the problem," says Graydon. "Women are placing far too much trust in unreliable sources of information - particularly around breast implants. And the consequences can be devastating."

Now that the contest is over, www.plasticassets.com links to a statement by Graydon as well as www.breastimplantinfo.org, a source of independent information about breast implants provided by the National Research Center for Women & Families, a respected non-profit research and educational organization based in Washington, DC.

Plastic Assets was created by The Panty Raiders, founded by designer Katie Marsh and writer/filmmaker Leba Haber Rubinoff. Last year, they won awards for their website www.forgetmenotpanties.com. Shari Graydon is an author, speaker and activist whose award-winning media literacy book, In Your Face - The Culture of Beauty and You, has been called a junior version of The Beauty Myth, "doing for teens what Naomi Wolf's classic did for their
mothers." (http://www.sharigraydon.com)

For more information or to schedule an interview, contact: Shari Graydon (613) 797-9404 sgraydon@uottawa.ca Leba Haber Rubinoff (917) 603-9377 http://www.pantyraiders.org

Shari Graydon

(613) 233-3777 home office

(613) 797-9404 cell

www.sharigraydon.com