Meet the Woombies: Plush Uteruses You Can Send to Politicians So They’ll Leave Yours Alone
While most of the debate centered around the overturning of Roe v. Wade has focused solely on abortion, the potential unintended consequences impacting women’s health led NC-based advertising agency The Variable to create and launch Woombies.com, an e-commerce platform featuring plush uteruses and a “buy one, send one” business model. For every Woombie plushie purchased, The Variable will send a Woombie to a politician actively working to reduce women’s access to equitable healthcare and reproductive rights, with 100 percent of proceeds going to Planned Parenthood.
The centrepiece of the campaign is The Woombie, a pink, plush uterus doll that’s soft enough to not damage fragile male egos. Thanks to Woombies, anyone outraged by the erosion of women’s rights can go to Woombies.com and “send politicians a womb of their own so they’ll leave ours alone.” The website also offers package deals like the “Extreme Court Woombie Bundle,” which ships Woombies to the Supreme Court Justices who overturned Roe, and “The Dirty Dozen,” which sends Woombies to 12 people from a carefully selected list of anti-choice politicians like Ted Cruz, Matt Gaetz, and Mitch McConnell.
Woombies made its first big in-person debut on the national stage during the week of the Women’s March where hundreds of Woombies were dispersed to the crowd, given out to other women’s rights advocate groups, and hand-delivered to the offices of both anti-choice and pro-women’s rights legislators. In addition, the Woombies team wanted to make sure the powers that be in Washington would be able to #ReadTheWomb, so they created a giant inflatable 15-foot uterus and placed it across from the country’s largest phallic symbol — the Washington Monument. The team will return to Washington the week before midterm elections to remind everyone what is on the line this election season — bodily autonomy for every citizen in the country.
Word of Woombies will continue to spread through an irreverent series of videos and social content. Satirical QVC-style videos feature three dystopian hosts who gush over the soft, squeezy Woombie while delivering hard-hitting facts — like a nationwide ban on abortion would increase the maternal mortality rate for Black women by 33%. “Men have been fighting over who gets to control wombs since before recorded history,” says a host, “now they can have a womb of their very own so maybe they’ll leave ours alone.”
Shorter videos with satirical Woombie jingles (“Hands-off-of-our-bodies! Get back to your oil lobby!”) will be seeded across social channels and TikTok videos will feature Woombies spreading the word. All content was created to educate people about the larger implications of overturning Roe and positively empower those who want to take action.
The agency’s first inspiration for Woombies came from an associate creative director’s heartbreaking story. Sarah Mosseller, who was diagnosed with breast cancer a few months after joining the agency in early 2021, spent much of the last year-and-a-half in treatment for an avoidable form of cancer that never would have happened if doctors had listened to her wishes. Ten years ago, six different doctors refused to proactively remove her ovaries despite her adamant and repeated desire to be permanently child-free. Their reasoning: “you may change your mind and want kids someday.”
“People who can become pregnant deserve bodily autonomy now. I was actively denied voluntary sterilization in my early twenties, which contributed to my diagnosis of a life-threatening cancer now. Federal and state governments are denying citizens fundamental human liberty and people are dying because of it,” said Mosseller. “At the March, our giant uterus became a beacon for hundreds of supporters from over 30 states and nine countries as they took pictures, got Woombies of their own, and raised their voices in support of individual liberty. And that was only the beginning.”
“In the face of issues like this, the honest visceral reaction most of us have is to make a statement or a social post or an idea that is well-intentioned, but only lives for a very small moment in time - which limits its potential for real impact,” said David Mullen, CEO and partner at The Variable. “The people in our lives who are impacted by this need more than that. They need longer-standing, tangible ideas that help raise awareness of the very real intended and unintended consequences happening with women’s rights at this very moment and they need real action against changing that. We often talk about complaining by creating and Woombies is a great example of that.”
