In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Category: Advertising

Two Girls One Cucumber

PETA-SUPER-BOWL-AD

Oy, Peta, this is just getting sad. If vegetarianism / veganism is really the way to go, you should be able to convince people of that using rational argument and evidence. “Look, titties! Girls fellating a carrot!” is not the most convincing position.

Also, last I checked, women were more likely to be vegetarian than men. Maybe insulting the people who are most receptive to your cause is not the best strategy?

Kiddie Couture

Image of a young girl in make-up and heels; another young girl in a fur coat and sunglasses driving a car.

French Vogue features its youngest models ever: Kindergartners. They’re fully made up and are striking eyes-cast-down, pouty-lipped poses. And the spread is called “Cadeaux,” which means “gifts.” Um, yuck.

The copy asks, in part, “What makeup at what age? What makeup does one wear at 13? What about at 70? Obviously not like one does at 20.” Styling a spread about choosing the right makeup when you’re 13 or 20 or 70? It makes complete sense to choose models who look like they’re about 9.

In Vogue’s defense, fifth-graders were probably too fat.

Food Responsibility

We all know that fast food isn’t the healthiest, but these calorie, fat and sodium counts from popular fast-food restaurants are still really horrifying. More than 10,000 milligrams of sodium in one order of chicken wings? I don’t think I eat 10,000 milligrams of sodium in a week.

The article itself focuses, predictably, on The Obesity Epidemic, and how these kinds of foods are making us all fat. More importantly, these kinds of foods are making us really, really unhealthy. And while most of us probably realize that eating a whole cheesecake is not going to be great for us, some of the foods on this list are particularly sneaky — like a chicken burrito that has more than a day’s worth of fat, calories and sodium. I don’t think that most people are under the impression that Chipotle is healthy, but if you’re on the run and trying to make a health-conscious choice, the chicken option might be your pick. Similarly, the portion size at some of these restaurants is unreal — if a dish is marketed as a “personal pizza,” it shouldn’t be enough food for four.

Part of the problem with the American dependence on fast food is cultural, which is enabled by (and to some degree helps to create) the structural problems that keep us from accessing the healthiest foods possible. We’re bizarrely puritan when it comes to centering pleasure in our lives — we just don’t do it. We think that Just Say No works for food and for sex — two of the most basic human pleasures and (on a species-wide, if not individual, level) necessities — but then we heavily market the most reductive and unhealthy versions of both. We’re inundated with advertising that uses women’s bodies as symbols of sex itself and with mainstream pornography that centers heterosexual male experience and dominance. Culturally, we’re not focused on holistic sexual pleasure so much as easy titillation and shock-value sex, coupled with disdain and judgment towards people who actually do have sex in whatever way is deemed outside of local values — whether that’s outside of marriage, or at too young of an age, or outside of a monogamous relationship, or with someone of the same sex, or wherever else we draw that line (and we like to draw and re-draw that line).

We do the same thing with food (and obviously I’m far from the first person to make this connection). We talk a big game about The Horrors of Obesity and the necessity of healthy eating. We blame feminism for taking women out of the kitchen and into the workplace. We look at fat people like they’re moral failures. We watch television shows like The Biggest Loser, which contribute to the cultural myth that If You Just Work Hard Enough, You’ll Be Ok. We ascribe fatness to simply eating too much.

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Bikinis and Bridesmaids and Blubber, Oh My!

As a member of the Order of Fat Curmudgeonly Feminist Hermits, there are few months that I view with more trepidation than June. Not only am I deluged with invitations to social events I dread attending, but I’m also deeply immersed in the advertising that surrounds such social events.

I am referring, of course, to pool parties and weddings.

You’d think that I’d be fans of both of these events because they involve many of my favourite things, like water, free food, dancing, and opportunities to observe drunk people in their natural habitat. However, there’s a big elephant in the room at these events. The elephant in the room being, naturally, the lack of elephants in the room; if you plan on attending a pool party or being the guest of honour at a wedding, you had better be as svelte as possible.

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“Cougars” out, “Sugardaddies” in

Google has made the decision to block ads for “cougar” dating sites, which advertise the ability to set up older women with younger men. If Google were taking a stand against quasi-pedophiliac advertising (if that’s what the cougar ads even were), that would be fine. But they still allow ads for “sugardaddy” websites, which set up older men with “sugarbabies.” The problem seems to be with older women behaving in a “predatory” manner. It’s ok if older men want to exchange money and gifts for sex with younger women, but women wanting to have sex with younger men for the sake of mutual pleasure? Family-un-friendly!

I think I can taste some misogyny in this water.

There’s an ad I spend a lot of time glaring at on my commute. It’s a masterful piece of misogyny on the part of bottled water company Pump Australia. I snapped a photo, so you can take part in the pain, too!

Image description in post

Sorry, the lighting obscures the image somewhat. Here’s a larger version. It’s set on the roof of a tall building on a rainy night. At the top it says ‘Big to do list?’ In the background is a figure swinging out of a helicopter onto a wire. There’s a big glowing ticked checkbox, as though on a to do list, next to the figure. The figure appears again along the wire, about to head into a building to the back left of the image. Again, a ticked checkbox. There are people partying inside the building; presumably the figure has been inside there, too, because there’s another ticked checkbox. On our rooftop, there’s what’s presumably the figure’s hand, angled as though from our perspective, holding a water bottle and squirting water out. In front of him/us, there’s a woman in high heels and a white dress. She’s gesturing at him/us, with legs somewhat angled as her skirt flares around her. There’s a big glowing unchecked box next to her.

And just in case you didn’t get the message with the big phallic water bottle squirting, uh, water, at the bottom there’s a message advising you to search ‘stay pumped’. (I wouldn’t bother, nothing relevant comes up when you plug that in Google, which seems a bit bizarre seeing as there’s a huge marketing campaign around that search term.)

Could they have tried any harder with the clingy white dress in the rain and the male gaze and the – no, I think not.

Bonus misogyny! There’s another ad that I wasn’t able to get a picture of that works in a similar vein, except with a naked woman seen from the back who is jumping into water. If anyone can snap a photo for us and send it in, I’d appreciate it!

Naïveté and Submission

A French anti-smoking ad compares smoking to oral sex, with the slogan “To smoke is to be a slave to tobacco.” The New York Times describes the visuals of the ads thusly:

The slogan is bland enough: “To smoke is to be a slave to tobacco.” But it accompanies photos of an older man, his torso seen from the side, pushing down on the head of a teenaged girl with a cigarette in her mouth. Her eyes are at belt level, glancing upwards fearfully. The cigarette appears to emerge from the dress trousers of the adult.

The image is here if you want to take a look. And it’s… ick.

The vice-president of the advertising firm that created the ad says it intends to portray smoking as “an act of naïveté and submission.” Which is apparently what oral sex is? Complicating the issue is that the teenager with the cigarette in his/her mouth looks scared; the person with the cigarette in their pants has a hand on the teenager’s head, and the whole situation looks more like abuse than sex (or naivete or submission, for that matter).

I’m with the French feminist who commented that “what is most shocking [about this ad] is the banalization of sexual violence,” and that “It’s a poverty of imagination. When people have no ideas they use female bodies.”