The Wonderbra's notorious 'Hello Boys' advertising campaign, launched in the United Kingdom in 1994 and featuring model Eva Herzigová in a push-up bra on massive billboards across London and other British cities, sparked an immediate national debate about women's bodily presentation and the relationship between bra advertising and objectification. The campaign was credited with causing traffic accidents and was both widely celebrated and widely condemned. It sold 1.5 million bras in its first year and the image became one of the most recognisable advertisements of the 1990s.

The Wonderbra controversy entered British literary culture at a moment when feminist poets including Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay were producing their most significant work. Duffy's poetry, which frequently engaged with women's bodily experience and the male gaze, provided an immediate literary counterpoint to the campaign's visual language. The 'Hello Boys' billboard was cited in feminist essays and poetic manifestos as a new iteration of the old corset's work: reshaping women's bodies for male approval.