Caitlin Roper is a campaigner against the sexual exploitation of women and girls.

Ryan Gosling gets it. As his character asserts in the 2011 film Crazy, Stupid, Love , "The war between the sexes is over. We won the second women started doing pole dancing for exercise."

It's a humorous line because it's actually quite insightful. Men "won" when women not only tolerated, but embraced their subordination.

This idea that women find power in conforming to their assigned role as sexual objects is not just paramount to third-wave, liberal feminism, but also increasingly serves as a convenient justification for corporates who want to appear socially progressive while still exploiting women's bodies and sexuality to sell products.

Take for instance sex shop Honey Birdette, which promotes itself as a high-end lingerie retailer. It's a company that has a long history of using highly sexualised, borderline pornographic, sometimes BDSM themed advertising in shopping centres around the country.

Its shop front windows are plastered with massive, pornified images of women's bodies and even just parts of their bodies, accompanied by slogans like "Tasty Treats," suggesting women's bodies are things to be consumed.

It should come as no great surprise that the company has attracted numerous complaints for its sexist advertisements over the years, making the top ten in the Advertising Standards Board's most complained about list last year. Just last month, Honey Birdette's latest ad campaign was found to be in breach of industry codes and standards that require advertisers to treat sex, sexuality and nudity with sensitivity to the relevant audience.

In response, "exasperated" owner Eloise Monaghan told news.com.au that Honey Birdette promoted "female empowerment."

In a cultural context where women's sexuality and reproductive capacities have traditionally been controlled by men, female empowerment or women "owning" their sexuality may be viewed as a welcome development. But what does legitimate female sexual empowerment look like? Who is sexually empowered, and on what basis?

Representations of so-called female sexual empowerment in mainstream media and in pornography appear to replicate the same gendered dynamics that already exist. They involve women being publicly sexual, exposing their bodies and mimicking porn inspired poses and acts. The basis of this empowerment, as far as I can tell, is women being sexually appealing to men, being desired by men and for the most part, being sexually submissive.

If the goal is real sexual empowerment, and women being free to express their authentic sexuality, why is this revolutionary new version of sexuality still centred around catering to the fantasies of heterosexual men? If this new female empowerment is indistinguishable from the same old sexual objectification, is this really progress? And if this is the means by which women find power, where is the exchange of any actual power?

Monaghan dismissed opposition to Honey Birdette's shopping centre advertisements - described by one complainant as "larger than life pornography"- as the work of "Christian fundamentalists" who she believed were unfairly targeting the company. She went on: "We're entering a particularly conservative time where girls are being made to cover up and it's not okay."

While it's arguably disingenuous to conflate consumer concern about corporate sexual exploitation with a patriarchal desire to control women's bodies, it's a popular tactic employed by those with a financial stake in this continued treatment of women. By painting detractors as fundamentalists, conservatives or even a threat to women's rights, companies and institutions that routinely objectify women can go about doing business as usual, but frame their exploitation as liberation or a response to a conservative attack on women's rights.

Through the rhetoric of female empowerment corporates can position themselves as progressive and socially conscious while continuing to uphold the sexist status quo. Women's bodies and sexuality are still being exploited for profits, but now corporates can profess to be championing women's rights in the process. Under this empowerment framework, any objection to the near constant sexist and objectifying depictions of women and girls in advertising, media and popular culture can easily be written off as conservatism, "shaming" women, or a fear of the female form.

But the mainstreaming of pornographic imagery, normalising the objectification of women by corporations whose primary goal is to sell a product is not in the interests of women, nor is it about advancing the status of women or granting us more power- it's about profits.

It's not just feminism that is being co-opted by corporations to promote their brand. Corporations are increasingly attempting to capitalise on social movements and political issues for PR purposes. Just weeks ago, Honey Birdette staged a pro-same sex marriage demonstration, a lingerie flash mob featuring women wearing Honey Birdette products and holding signs like "I heart HB." The move was slammed on social media, with one user describing the stunt as a "money grab" that was "worse than the Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad." ABC's Media Watch described the apparent marketing ploy as "a pretty obvious attempt to hijack an issue for commercial reasons."

Controversy surrounding Honey Birdette doesn't end there, with female staff launching a petition calling for an end to workplace bullying and sexual harassment. Ex-employee Chantelle Rogers described the experience as "a nightmare," describing a sexist dress code, employees humiliated and threatened by management, and being pressured to tolerate sexual harassment and intimidation from customers.

Online employee reviews paint a disturbing picture, with comments such as, "If you don't fit the lingerie you don't work there," and "I lost 5kg in a month from the stress alone." Employees describe being treated as eye candy, expected to exploit their sexuality to make sales. "We were regularly told of 'liberating' stories where employees would be harassed by men but it was ok cause 'they turned it into a $1000 sale'."

Does this sound like female empowerment?

The research is clear: sexualising and objectifying treatment of women harms women in a wide range of ways. With twenty years of empirical research, 135 studies found across 109 publications, there is no shortage of research into the negative effects of sexual objectification. Consistent evidence found that:

"regular, everyday exposure to [sexually objectifying portrayals of women] are directly associated with a range of consequences, including higher levels of body dissatisfaction, greater self-objectification, greater support of sexist beliefs and of adversarial sexual beliefs, and greater tolerance of sexual violence toward women. Moreover, experimental exposure to this content leads both women and men to have a diminished view of women's competence, morality, and humanity."

Floor to ceiling pornified images of women have real-life consequences for women and girls. We deserve better than this. We deserve better than routine sexual subordination repackaged as female empowerment. If empowerment is our goal, we won't find it within the commercial interests of companies like Honey Birdette.

Caitlin Roper is a campaigner against the sexual exploitation of women and girls.