Laundromat in hot water for cheap shot

3 Jun 2015

A Cape Town laundromat owned by restaurant group Madame Zingara is "strictly for dirty laundry only" but it landed in hot water over its advertising.

Image via FreeDigitalPhotos

This was after former ANC MP Melanie Verwoerd found an advertisement for The White Rabbit Wash House racist and sexist and complained to the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa.

The ad appeared in a booklet distributed at restaurants in the Madame Zingara group. In it, the laundromat promised to "Wash wash cheap cheap - we spread leg make happy happy".

The tagline appeared underneath an image of the laundromat's interior showing a mural of an apparently Asian woman.

Verwoerd said that the tagline was discriminatory. "Not only does it portray Chinese people as incapable of speaking English properly, but it also suggests that women who do laundry will or should spread their legs to make customers 'happy happy'," Verwoerd said in her complaint.

Madame Zingara told the authority that it had already withdrawn the material and would not use it again. The authority accepted this and considered the matter closed.

But on Monday just before noon, The Times found the offensive line still appeared on the Madame Zingara website where the laundromat is listed, two weeks after the authority made its ruling.

By Monday afternoon the line had vanished from the website, though "Wash wash cheap cheap" still appears.

"It was never our intention to offend anyone," Madame Zingara representative Nicky-Anne de Beer said.

Source: The Times

Source: I-Net Bridge

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