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Orange Juice That Comes In Juggs

Thomas

Posting on this at the request of my spouse. At 20 seconds, is that the most transparent metaphor for breasts to sell orange juice? (It might not be so clear if it were not for the voice-over, which contextualizes the images.)

We’re surrounded by the commodification of the female body. The drumbeat is so steady that it’s hard not to tune it out, but it needs calling out every once in a while.

I can see the thinking. Orange juice is a kids’ beverage. Charging a premium requires rebranding. Rebranding requires that they make a sharp break with what people think about orange juice. It can’t be simple and yummy, it has to be sophisticated, sensual … erotic … and, cut to the thinly veiled metaphors for women’s body parts. Not women, not women’s bodies, but women’s body parts.

Some het guy in creative is probably geeking out about how slick this is. But it’s not. It’s annoying.

(While I’m on the subject of ubiquitous women’s bodies as superfluous ornaments: Stop with the “ring card girls.” I don’t need some woman I’ve never met holding a sign with a round number on it; I know what round it is. I’m keeping a scorecard.)

47 thoughts on Orange Juice That Comes In Juggs

  1. How many comments will we have to wait until someone says that this is irrelevant/not sexist/nothing to do with feminism? I wait with anticipation!

    The advert is also a complete rip off of the Marks & Spencers food adverts in the UK – it’s almost identical.

  2. Wow, they even made the bottle into a curvy, sexy hourglass. You can’t tell me that particular shape is designed to be a better plastic-bottle grip. Hah!

    Seriously though — I’ve had the misfortune to work in and around advertising, marketing, and marketing-driven product design. There’s no way all of this together was not deliberately driven by a plan to make Tropicana Orange Juice “more sexy.” The slow-motion camera, the sexay smooth groves FM radio music, the actress chosen for voice-over, the words in the script, the spurting splashing liquid and curvy bouncy shapes, they all play their part. I mean, I would hope by now we all realize that ads are designed this way deliberately — even over-deliberately (c.f. Enzyte). I feel sorry for anyone who seriously denies and claims “you’re just seeing things and making it up!” because they’ve got to be one of the dwindling number of saps who might actually be influenced by this sort of fairly transparent “subliminal sex messages” ploy. Oh, the arms race of advertising.

  3. Actually, it’s rather subtle compared to this orangina ad in which the oranges=breasts analogy is more explicit (warning NSFW, and really disturbing uncanny valley furry eroticism)

  4. Wow, they even made the bottle into a curvy, sexy hourglass. You can’t tell me that particular shape is designed to be a better plastic-bottle grip. Hah!

    Wonder how much of this is the “sex sells” mentality, lowering the volume of orange juice in said bottle to gain more profit/bottle, and how much of this is Tropicana being undercut because they are often one of the most expensive brands of orange juice sold in the supermarkets I’ve seen in Queens and Manhattan?

  5. Exholt, I suspect those things are basically one in the same: “Gentlemen, our brand orange juice is losing market share. Our cost structure requires us to charge premium prices, but consumers will not pay that for the same old Tropicana. How can we get customers to pay more per ounce? I have a proposal. Let’s make it the sexy adult orange juice.”

    Holly, absolutely the whole package goes together. It’s unmistakable what they’re going for. But the twin-bulbous-glass-objects image jumped the shark, I thought, pushing the pitch over the line into ridicule territory.

  6. Hey! I got an idea!!!

    Let’s make a hot dog commercial and disguse it as a metaphor for DICKS!!!!!!!!!!!! Let’s shove it in a woman’s mouth and hear her moan with delight as she says how much she loves the taste of the sausage!!!

    lolz.

  9. The hot dog would not exactly be a goosey-gander reversal. That would be presenting a woman eating a thinly veiled penis. A closer analog would be to shoot a “been: it’s what’s for dinner” commercial with a bunch of cropped shots of stacked, ripped young male torsos around a grill. But that would look so jarring and bizarre that no ad agency would present it or advertiser go for it …

  10. I’m honestly not sure I’d have picked up on the breast imagery (although the pouring orange juice reminds me a bit much of the halter neck dress I’m currently working on), but the husky, bedroom voice with “what on earth accent IS that?!?” pushed it over into food porn for me. You should honestly not be that excited over orange juice.

    *sigh*

    They can’t even leave our orange juice alone. Bastards.

  11. On Ring Card Girls:
    I was a ring card girl, and I enjoyed it very much.
    I was treated well and paid well. It was a fun side job while I got my masters.
    It’s cool if you don’t enjoy seeing them but some people like them and I just wanted to put my 2cents in. Having been one, I can tell you it’s not so bad!

  12. I understand and agree with what you’re saying here, but the twin glass things at the end look like testicles to me. Is it dual male/female sexualization or is it just me?

  14. Shae: I don’t think the ire was directed at the models themselves, but at the event producers who think it’s necessary to include them.

    “Some people like them” and “it’s not so bad” aren’t particularly relevant arguments to a complaint about being pandered to.

  15. You know why they do this? It’s easy. Heaven forbid that they take the time to come up with something other then “lets sex it up.” The ad people and the people who paid for this ad fail. Personally I like the Florida OJ people who say “we grow these oranges here, darn it, not import the suckers.” I buy their stuff.

  16. I’m sorry. This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read in my life. Really. And I’ve read a lot of moronic, goofy crap.

    I’ve heard of people reading too far into things, but I must say, you’ve read so far into this, you’ve gone and popped out the other side.

    You’ve gone right from imagining things, to downright hallucinating them.

  18. I saw the ad on tv a couple days ago. My husband’s response to “Wait, am I supposed to want to drink the juice or fuck it?” was “I don’t think they care so long as you buy it first.”

    It really reminds me of that Heineken Light ad that ran a year or so back.

  19. Good thing we’ve got D around to tell us what’s what.

    Well, considering feminism has now moved on to claiming oranges are sexist because a glass sort of resembles a breast in a vaguely rorschach sort of way, yeah, I figure someone has to call BS.

  20. I mean, I would hope by now we all realize that ads are designed this way deliberately — even over-deliberately (c.f. Enzyte). I feel sorry for anyone who seriously denies and claims “you’re just seeing things and making it up!” because they’ve got to be one of the dwindling number of saps who might actually be influenced by this sort of fairly transparent “subliminal sex messages” ploy. Oh, the arms race of advertising.

    And oh, the tortoises of that race. I think we know who they are.

  23. It’s funny because D obviously didn’t read all the comments to see that people already predicted his response, so now he just looks totally lame.

    Heh, bit of a run-on sentence.

  24. It’s funny because D obviously didn’t read all the comments to see that people already predicted his response, so now he just looks totally lame.

    The only ones that look lame are the ones reaching so far as to associate orange juice with boobs.

    Honestly. It’s laughable. What else now? I mean, the trackball on my mouse is round! It might be a breast symbol! My mouse is sexist!

  25. Honestly. It’s laughable. What else now? I mean, the trackball on my mouse is round! It might be a breast symbol! My mouse is sexist!

    Your mouse has a breathy voiceover and theme music? Where do I buy me one of those?

  26. That Orangina ad linked above is incredibly disturbing. Furry and thinly veiled bukkake themes (zebra-woman “riding” Orangina bottles until they burst and spray juice all over another weird furry woman) and the single male characterized as an anthropomorphic bear. Also, all the furry women are absurdly skinny with huge breasts (as if octopi had breasts) and the bear is all big and hairy and manly. I find the bukkake theme most disturbing, though. Even more than the furriness, if possible. It shows how in Europe even more sexualized ads can appear because people there have greater tolerance for sexual themes on television (and also greater tolerance for sexism, it would seem.)

  27. No, D. is right. Advertisers spend millions of dollars, hire art directors and professionals with psych and marketing training and spend days or even weeks filming 10 seconds of film, so naturally sometimes bizarre sexual images just pop in accidentally.

    Honestly, have you ever seen a commercial shoot? They spend hours debating the speed at which beer leaves a glass. Everything is deliberate.

  28. My husband warned me that he might call me ‘Tropicana’ next time we have sex because “that was the hottest fucking orange juice ever.”

    Seriously, what were these people thinking? As someone else already mentioned, it is incredibly lazy, but it also seems to be completely pointless. Who the hell is going to buy overpriced orange juice based on THAT commercial?

    Then again, maybe I’d be better off not knowing the answer…

  29. Besides, don’t some people say that the original wine glasses were modeled off of some famous lady’s breasts? (or something like that)

    Whether its true or not, it’s not like no one has ever look at a glass and thought, “boobs!” So no one’s over-reaching here.

  32. Just tried to watch that at my desk here at work but felt compelled to minimize it after a few seconds…

    Bill Hicks was on the money when he said that eventually advertisers would do away with any pretense and just end up zooming in on a naked woman until we see the words BUY COKE across her groin (I think it went something like that, it was much funnier when he said it).

  33. Besides, don’t some people say that the original wine glasses were modeled off of some famous lady’s breasts? (or something like that)

    Marie Antoinette. Champagne glasses (the shallow cupped ones, not the flutes). At least that’s how I recall that story. *grin* Still not sure if it’s actually true or just an urban (albeit Parisian) legend.

    Signing off, the Repository of Useless Information

  34. I can attest personally that that orangina ad was quite a hit with the furry community. It was made fun of and unfortunately admired.

    Lot more octopus characters for about 3 months… I think two were even guys…

    Personally I was embarassed as all hell when all the bukakke crap happened. I mean the overly silly body types are something I’m unfortunately used to, but the rest was just so… childish.

  35. D – seriously, you don’t think that the advertisers *wanted* to make that association? Look, I work in design and advertising (souless as it is) and there isn’t anything that isn’t delibrate. It comes across as sexual because THEY WANTED IT TO. No-one is imagining anything. If you personally can’t see it, it is because you have probably been desensitised by so many adverts shoving sex and female objectification down your throat.

  36. I grew up in Italy, where naked women selling everything from yogurt to cars to bottled water are the norm. They will be naked and coyly sexual on TV at all hours, and never mind during what program they’re advertising.

    This exposure has left me with two things, one positive and one negative.

    The positive: human bodies are pretty, but they’re just bodies. I have no qualms with being naked, seeing other people naked, or being accidentally walked in on. A body is a body is a body is a body is a body. There’s no shame involved, for me, and I feel great. My friends call me “European”.

    The negative: that ad? I’ve seen it on TV plenty of times, and it didn’t even register. Sure, the voice was sexual, but I interpreted that as MOCKING those ads which are overly sexual. Boobs? I see none, nor did I infer any.

    So I’m probably kinda broken here, but I thought the commercial was funny.

  37. It’s true, the next trend in this kind of advertising is to still make all sorts of sexual / sultry references, but do it in a way that’s so over-the-top or so winking that as viewers we can feel like we’re in on the joke. Of course, from the advertiser’s point of view they get two birds for one stone — a sexy ad which (theoretically, I’m dubious) pushes all those semi-conscious libido buttons, and an ad that’s also “intelligent” because it’s making fun of those sexy ads. Irony pays the bills!!

  38. I don’t mind that sex sells, but can straight women/gay guys get a chance for once? On billboards and ads outside of the gay male press they almost always use women.

  39. The problem so often is not that sex sells, but that women, women’s bodies and women’s body parts are coded as sex itself. Women become nothing more than personifications of sex as a commodity, a thing that men want. And personification may be too generous a word in this case. Is there a word for the opposite? When an actual person becomes the idea, rather than an idea being represented as a person? Is it really objectification, or something more?

  40. but that women, women’s bodies and women’s body parts are coded as sex itself. Women become nothing more than personifications of sex as a commodity,

    Yes, that. That, that, that. Well said.

  42. Okay, I’ve watched it twice: once with, once without audio and I think the reading is a stretch. Mind you, I’m 50 years old and have been a second-wave feminist since I bought the first issue of Ms. as a teenager, and I teach English literature and literary theory at the university level so I understand how subtexts work. But there just ain’t much to these orange halves. Breasts are not hemispherical. You need more than just a vague physical similarity for a metaphor to work.

  44. Carol, it’s not about the orange halves, didn’t you see the glasses? I worked in marketing for awhile, and those here that said everything is deliberate are totally right on. Advertisers don’t do anything by accident, from the colors they choose, to the negative space, to the imagery…everything is done for a purpose. I got out of that line of work though because I just hate what it stands for, advertisements are just so insidious, in my opinion, especially the ones that use women’s bodies/body parts to sell crap…they are the worst.

  45. meeneecat: yes, I saw the glasses and the bottle which other commentators have made so much of, and yes I know sex sells and women’s bodies equal sex and advertisers make conscious and unconscious decisions to manipulate the public. I have been around the block a few times, after all. And I’m glad to hear you were able to get out of such a soul-killing line of work.

    But you really have to work hard to get breasts or a woman’s body out of any of the images we are offered. The glasses are, yes, pleasingly roundish. But they are also flattened out/sliced off in what should be the nipple end, so that undermines the resemblance unless you want to suggest some sick dismemberment theme going on there and I don’t think the image will carry that weight. And as I said before and as I tell my students when we are looking at metaphors, you need more than one point of resemblance for the metaphor to work. Breasts aren’t hard. They are not flat disks on the outer end. They are not asymmetrically placed one partly behind the other. They are not ever receptacles for liquids poured into them. The French Orangina ad at least gets the relationship of liquid to breast right, though in a rather upsetting way, when the bear squeezes juice out of the orange half through the blossom end.

    The bottle bears only the most limited relation to the conventional image of the idealized female “hourglass figure.” I mean, look at it! If it’s supposed to be a female body then it’s a very underdeveloped woman’s body. Should we assume then that the advertising agency also intended to arouse desire for orange juice among pedophiles? That the bottle suggests the body of a young girl? a young boy? Is the bottle of Listerine I swig from every morning to combat periodontal disease supposed to be a Cubist suggestion of a female body that I grip around the waist and imbibe from the neck of?

    Other caveats I give my students, or better yet, they figure out for themselves, is that interpretive readings often reveal more about the reader than the writer, and that writers often fail to satisfy their own intentions. Whatever we are left with, making meaning of it is often a collaboration in which one party has “left the room.” In this case I’m willing to accept that the advertisers maybe wished to but certainly failed to sexualize the juice. So why make such a big deal about it? There are other, more important things to think about: for example, why some 30 plus years after I went to my first consciousness raising session, do highly successful teenage girls feel compelled to appear in cheesecake pics for Vogue. What’s with that, anyway?

  46. Actually, my first reaction to this post would’ve ordinarily been to say something like, “I don’t know, that’s kind of a stretch,” but this past weekend a friend of mine was telling me about this magazine story she read that said a huge percentage of camera operators, videographers, etc. at places like the Food Network originally came from the porn industry. The thinking being that they know better than anyone else how to make things glisten the right way, do extreme close-ups, film people putting things into their mouths, etc. Sounds gross, but watch one of those ultra-stylized cooking shows and you can totally see how the porn sensibility has been re-created, just substituting food for, uh, genitals.

    So with that in mind, it’s not the least bit difficult to imagine that these juice companies would be trying to sex up their products as much as possible. In fact, my only question now is whether the folks who actually filmed the wet, bouncing oranges in this commercial have something like “My Pipes Need Cleaning” or “Nympho Cheerleader Pool Party XXXVI” on their résumés.

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