La Senza Sings La Christmas Carol A La Cup Size

on Sunday, 19 December 2010.

By mystery blogger "Tawdry Hepburn."

La Senza lingerie is fabulous.

I'm not being paid to say that - as a modestly busted lady, I like a strapless bra that doesn't end up around my waist. And as a lady with an actual bottom, I like knickers that don't migrate up that particular area.

But I am somewhat baffled by La Senza’s "Cup Size Choir" Christmas advertisement.

I used to work for FHM, a men's magazine, so the sight of women in lingerie is by no means offensive to me. I'm not some pearl-clutching prude who'd have all pictures of women in undies covered with bed sheets or feminine products enveloped in brown paper wrapping.

Advertising has its place. It's a shame much of it features models whose body shapes are only attainable by torturous dieting, surgery or rare genetics. Kudos to La Senza for choosing women whose body types go pounds and curves beyond "two balloons on a broomstick.”

But unfortunately, the Cup Size Choir looks a bit too much like a bevy of blow-up dolls to me. The whole concept of women lolling about on what look to be prison mattresses, singing notes according to their cup size is, pardon the pun, a tad off-key.

Even more so is the “play the women” component of the campaign: if you're really bored, you can log onto the La Senza website and click on the women to create, record and play your own tunes. Oh, the giddy joy.

I'm not hideously offended by the idea, but I am wondering to whom it will appeal? Teenage boy music students who need motivation to practice their scales?

I would not be at all surprised if this is where most of their hits come from – young lads who are too young or too broke to buy nudie magazines. Once word gets out to boys' schools (or maybe it already has judging from the almost-two million YouTube views and counting), there'll be plenty of furtive bedroom music making when Mum and Dad think homework is being done.

I will happily stand corrected if La Senza's marketing types have any research with respect to target audiences, but I am pretty sure this demographic spends more money on acne cream than they do on lingerie.

Mystery blogger Tawdry Hepburn is a "feisty, fearless cynic who fights idiocy wherever she finds it, in between cooking, eating, travelling, driving, laughing and loving.”