At least it's nice to know that this fast-food joint has completely written me off as a customer...

unless... does anyone know if they also run those offensive commercials with moms in mini-vans eating salad on the run while serving their families? Wouldn't those two kinds of commercials be just great if they ran back to back?

You know, Bill Hicks was right all those years ago when he said to the ad people in his audience that they ought to just do the world a favor and kill themselves. If I believed in Satan, I'd swear ad execs were indeed his spawn.

WTF?! Being an education student I do not appreciate these stereotypes! I plan on doing some substitute teaching soon and it would be nice to be seen as a professional and not someone about to hump the desk to delight teenage boys.
If I had a Carl Jrs in my city I would freakin girlcott that place!

huh, I thought the song was pretty funny - flips the script on the current obsession with big booties.

I definitely don't see this is as racist. Sexist and objectifying women, yes. Racist, no.

Samhita, I agree with you that this ad is REALLY sexist, not to mention racist.

But I think you went off the deep end a little bit when you attacked Carl Jr's "...for supplying a bad product that is a public health threat"

So hamburgers are a public health threat now?

Are we supposed to all go out and become vegetarians now?

Sorry, Samhita, I refuse to jump on the diet pill manufacturer's bandwagon and embrace the myth of the "obesity epidemic".

There are enough folks out there encouraging women to become anorexic and/or bulemic - I'm not going to be one of them.

Carl's Jr. also did the porny Paris-Hilton-washing-a-car-then-eating-a-burger ads a year or two ago. I guess this is their marketing strategy.

I read someplace a few years back that Carl's Junior donates money to anti-choice organizations as well. The hypocricy of hypersexualizing women and then donating money to organizations which deny them the oppurtunity to make informed decisions about their bodies is astonishing to me.

"Are we supposed to all go out and become vegetarians now?"

Yes! And none of the reasons for doing so have anything to do with encouraging women to have eating disorders. Sheesh.

Actually Gregory, there is a wing of feminist thought that associates meat-eating and patriarchal domination.

Carol J. Adams' "The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory" is probably the best introduction.

Although I agree that sometimes people (women especially) use supposed vegetarianism/veganism to mask eating disorders, that doesn't mean all us "veges" are wrong!

anorak, I will admit that (at least according to Fredrich Engels) male domination of society emerged arond the same time that men domesticated wild animals.

Those animals became the property of the men who had previously been the elders who led the other men on hunting/driving off wild animals expeditions.

These animal herds were the first private property and, once there was a small group of men that had property, it suddenly became really important to know which of the clan's kids were fathered by those men (because, alongside of property, inheritance emerges too).

With that said, owning herds of animals is NOT the same thing as eating meat.

There's not a damned thing sexist about meat eating, I don't care what anybody says.

Meat, eaten in moderation, is good for you (in particular for adult women, who tend to have anemia problems for obvious menstrual-related reasons).

Beyond that, I've always been uncomfortable with food fetishists, who brand certain types of food as "wrong".

Hitler was a vegetarian - so was Himmler, and so were a number of other top nazi leaders as well.

None of those guys were particularly pro feminist, I believe.

anorak, I will admit that (at least according to Fredrich Engels) male domination of society emerged arond the same time that men domesticated wild animals.

Those animals became the property of the men who had previously been the elders who led the other men on hunting/driving off wild animals expeditions.

These animal herds were the first private property and, once there was a small group of men that had property, it suddenly became really important to know which of the clan's kids were fathered by those men (because, alongside of property, inheritance emerges too).

With that said, owning herds of animals is NOT the same thing as eating meat.

There's not a damned thing sexist about meat eating, I don't care what anybody says.

Meat, eaten in moderation, is good for you (in particular for adult women, who tend to have anemia problems for obvious menstrual-related reasons).

Beyond that, I've always been uncomfortable with food fetishists, who brand certain types of food as "wrong".

Hitler was a vegetarian - so was Himmler, and so were a number of other top nazi leaders as well.

None of those guys were particularly pro feminist, I believe.

My impression of this commercial is that it is making fun of wanna-be gangsters or posers.

Tacky? Yes. Over the top? Definitely. Racist? No.

Gregory – there are lots of reasons for being vegetarian. It's false logic to say that if Hitler was a vegetarian he should have been a feminist. It's also a questionable historical fact and Godwinning.

* disclaimer, I'm not a vegetarian myself, but after reading Eric Schlosser's FastFood Nation I can't believe that any of this shit is good for the people that consume it, and that has nothing to do with eating or not eating the meat in particular.

there are lots of reasons for being vegetarian. It's false logic to say that if Hitler was a vegetarian he should have been a feminist. It's also a questionable historical fact and Godwinning.

I can't say whether it's true of Himmler as well, but Hitler was well known to be a vegetarian. One biographer I read indicated that the shift to vegetarianism came after the suicide of either a niece or a second cousin with whom he was somehow involved. He started calling beef soup "Leichensuppe" (corpse soup). A clandestine satirist who parodied Nazi propaganda posters during the war also took a poster of Hitler in butcher's kit decapitating a chicken with the French freedom cap and added the text "Nur keine Angst. Er ist Vegetarier!" (Don't worry! He's a vegetarian!).

In any case, it certainly doesn't say anything about vegetarianism in general (and I don't understand Gregory to be saying otherwise). Though I think the real contribution Carl's Jr. (aka Hardee's) makes to bulimia is the fact that their food is quite nauseating (possibly the worst fast food chain ever).

Gregory – there are lots of reasons for being vegetarian. It's false logic to say that if Hitler was a vegetarian he should have been a feminist. It's also a questionable historical fact and Godwinning.

I think that was Gregory's point, neh? False equivalences for everybody!

Being a Nazi doesn't mean you're a vegetarian. Being a feminist doesn't mean you're a Nazi. Being a feminist doesn't mean you're a vegetarian. Or any of the other combinations of these three. They are all independent, and so suggesting that someone should be one because they are another is false.

Whether it's Godwinning is also interesting. I think the comparison was made because of the usually-hyperbolic comparisons made to Hitler. Not to be taken seriously. :-)

Hitler was a vegetarian - so was Himmler, and so were a number of other top nazi leaders as well.

Well! That didn't take long.

I dunno, anyone singing about genetically given body parts is fair game for mockery. Whether it's big butts, "itty-bitty" waists, brown eyes, blue eyes, long legs, etc. you should be prepared to be called on that. Have you ever heard a song from a man praising a woman about how she eats a balanced diet, or works out on a regular basis?

That said, Sir Mix-A-Lot is funny. Singing about big, juicy butts makes me giggle (though I am old enough to have initially found it offensive when it came out) because butts are funny! So is making fun of white people for supposedly praising flat buns in this context to promote a product, which it essentially is.

She's not being directly objectified, but rather second hand, as part of the joke. And I'm sure she saw a copy of the script before signing on.

Gregory, if you look here, you will find plenty of reasons why Carl's Jr. is a public health threat, none of which relate to anorexia:

http://www.carlsjr.com/content_svn/downloads/nutrition.pdf

At least it's nice to know that this fast-food joint has completely written me off as a customer.games