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I think I can taste some misogyny in this water.

Chally

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!

12 thoughts on I think I can taste some misogyny in this water.

  3. [Warning: The following comment may contain far more information than you ever wanted.]

    My brain keeps associating this with penis vacuum pumps. The clear plastic cylinder thing going on with the bottle doesn’t help. I’ve been told they — pumps, not water bottles — do work to produce erection and maybe a little enhancement as they say in the land of late-night TV commercials. I know for a certainty that many people enjoy them as sex toys. One should be caution as use for unsafely long times and/or at high pressures can cause the spongy tissues inside to rupture, leaving one’s workings shaped differently from how they’d been before.

    Many BDSM dungeon parties are clothing-optional, you see. The social room at the sorely missed queer BDSM space in my town became genital-covering-NOT-optional after the gentleman who provided the aforementioned visual accidentally dragged his equipment through the onion dip at the snack table. (And now you know that dungeon parties are often also potlucks. See? Lots of information!)

    1. …omg. This may be my favorite feministe comment of all time. THANK YOU KANINCHENZERO.

      Now I am going to eat some onion dip.

  7. Keep it coming. The fact that a woman’s body is just another of this males “things to do” accompanied with the suggestive spurt of water is incredibly sexist and thank you so much for bringing it up. I wonder what women who say…”oh feminism is so over” think when they see this…. Is this empowering to them? mmm I think not.

  8. Pump water’s been around in NZ for years (so long that at my high school 15 years ago, “pump bottle” was the generically used name for any sipper-top water bottle), and “Stay Pumped” has been the advertising tag line for most, if not all, of that time. From memory, it’s a CocaCola-Amatil brand.

    They’re pretty hit & miss with their ads, though the running theme is always using their water to stay hydrated (“pumped”) – improving energy, concentration, stamina for everyday life. This ad’s definitely a miss.

  9. I’m so glad that someone else agrees that these ads objectify women and are in extremely poor taste! I have to pass both this one and the one of the naked woman, on my train commute into Melbourne. I’ll try and get a picture of the naked ad for you as well. While some people may see these ads as inoffensive, sometimes its the subtle messages that really get to people – and can be processed without even realising the implicit sexism that lurks within. I not only hate the fact that women are portrayed as nothing more than an item to be ticked off a to do list, but also the fact that in the naked ad, the woman is seen from behind, a faceless character frozen in the male gaze. This is not the message that I want to be confronted with every day and it sure as hell doesn’t make me want to buy bloody pump water!

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