Recently in Consumerism Category
Transcript available at Shakesville.
They would probably say, "Fuck You Reebok." Outside of the idea that ladies like to buy sneakers not to run and be active but to make their ass smaller - the talking titties really have to go. Presenting women as no more than disembodied body parts (most often sexualized body parts) is Feminism 101 - it's dehumanizing and sexist. Also, it's not clever or original. Remember this one?
Some morning funny from our girl Sarah Haskins.
Today the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting hosted a press conference on human trafficking headlined by Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and Melanne Verveer, Ambassador-at-Large for Women's Issues. I am very glad to see a focus on this incredibly important and too often ignored issue.
Mira Sorvino, who is a Goodwill Ambassador with a focus on human trafficking, framed the lack of knowledge about modern day slavery in the U.S. through her personal experience: "Like many Americans I thought slavery had ended with Lincoln... It's this unbelievably subterranean crime."
From the early 80s...
And now.
I'm not a player, I just shit a lot.
Can someone please tell me what's going on with women and poop lately? Seriously, it feels like every commercial I see is the sisterhood of the fucked up intestinal tract. Let me be clear. I have no problem with openness surrounding women and bodily functions - it's certainly better than the sexist women-don't-poop thing or the hilarity that dudes find in women shitting (because it means we're like actual people). But I find commercials like these, well...hard to stomach.
Ladies' insides = The Perfect Storm. I'm fairly sure that men have stomach-related problems, so why is nearly every shit-product marketed solely to women?
Take the most famous of crap-making yogurts, Activia. (Said much classier on the Activia website, which notes the yogurt will "reduce long intestinal transit time.")
Or fellow poop-pusher, Yoplait:
Window displays at Barneys in New York City - featuring blood spattered mannequins who appeared to be fighting off attackers - were taken down after customers were horrified. (Inquiries from The Daily News didn't hurt either, I'm sure.)
Simon Doonan, creative director at the department store, said the windows were done while he was away. "We encourage our display people to be creative. We give them a lot of latitude, but this clearly crossed the line." Uh, yeah. I'd say so.
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Samhita linked to this campaign briefly last week, but we've got more to say about this.
That's right, folks. A reader alerted us to this craigslist ad casting call from Carl's Jr. and Hardee's burgers telling women that they could win $1,000 and a trip to Vegas if they submit a video of themselves eating one of their burgers and is "hot" enough for their marketing campaign.
Between Burger King's recent sick tactics and Carl's Jr. history of substituting women as meat in their ads, I don't think I'll be eating a burger for quite some time.
Carl's Jr.'s tagline is literally "More than just a piece of meat." So let's send them an email letting them know what that actually means to us. Or perhaps we can think of a good counter-campaign by sending them videos of what we really think of Carl's Jr. Any bright ideas?
UPDATE: It looks like the craigslist ad has been taken down. Woot! The contest, however, still exists.
It is your official midday fluff post. But isn't it funny?!
Oh wait this isn't vintage, this company exists today. Sociological Images (which is increasingly my go-to place for great break-downs of visual sexism) has a great breakdown of their not-so-funny marketing claims.
Let's start the week off right, shall we?
A couple of people have already made astute feminist analyses of the gross new chocolate bar, Fling, but I just had to comment on this:
Wrapped in a shiny pink and sliver package, this delicate "chocolate finger" is intended for women. The word "finger" is an industry term for a long, slim confection, Mars spokesman Ryan Bowling says, but with ads that invite you to "Pleasure yourself" in pink lettering, consumers might come to other conclusions.
Ewww.
PS. The candy bar sparkles. For serious.
You know, it's not often that a commercial makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. The tagline: "Tu cama. El lugar mas importante del mundo." ("Your bed. The most important place in the world.")
Read a translation and transcript here.
The due date is quickly approaching..... Everyone is eagerly waiting to see the new addition to the family. The pictures that are taken will be in the albums forever..... but wait, who is that unrecognizable monster in a hospital gown? NOT YOU!Finally there is A Dressed Up Delivery!
We at Pretty Pushers believe that you deserve to look your best when you work your hardest. The enclosed five items are sure to keep you feeling fabulous until the job is done!
I'm sure you're dying to know what these five magical items are. 1) Pink lip gloss and a mirror 2) A "delivery dress" 3) A headband 4) A lemon-water towelette 5) Heated massage oil
As a doula who has accompanied women during childbirth I can tell you that the only useful thing in the kit is the massage oil and maybe the headband. Massage can be great for pain mediation during labor, and if your hair is long you might want it out of your face. Oh, and the mirror could come in handy, because some women like to see what they are doing as they push.
Perpetuating screwed up ideas about women's beauty is already infuriating enough, but now we need to mix it in with childbirth. If you've ever actually been with a woman after she's given birth, I'd say she looks pretty damn beautiful, sweat and all.
For more pics, check out Women's Glib.
America's Next Top Model doesn't have the best track record when it comes to sexism and photo shoots, so I guess this shouldn't shock me. The show had the models dress up like little girls as a way to promote...purity?
This issue is really important to me, the issue of teen girls and being what I call 'out of control.' I did a survey on my talk-show website, and I found that one in five girls that are teens that we surveyed actually want to be a teen mom. Purity and innocence is something that's being lost and as you Top Models are doing this photo shoot, you guys are role models, too. The assignment was for you all to embody different little games that little girls play on the playground.
I write about this a lot in The Purity Myth (cough, buy it, cough), but I'll say it again: fetishizing "purity" and "innocence" generally just means that you end up fetishizing little girls.
UPDATE: Community blogger LTB also wrote a kick-ass post about this (long before I did, it seems - my bad!).
As many of you already know, I'm getting hitched. Deciding to get married brought up a lot of issues for me - politically and personally. Folks had a bunch of questions in comments, so I thought I would use these as a jumping off point to talk about issues of feminism, marriage, and - the current bane of my existence - weddings.
Hara says, "I hope that if you are considering changing your name it is one you both create for the two of you to change to (like a combo, but shorter) otherwise, I suggest not making your name change to his last name."
I'm keeping my last name. I think hyphenation is nice - and that's probably the route we'll go with kids - but I like my last name. A bunch. I've even considered adding in my mother's last name as well, as a little "fuck you" to the patriarchy, but I think Jessica Michelucci Valenti is too much of a mouthful, even for one with as big a mouth as me.
On the issue of same sex marriage, frye886 says, "It seems to me a more powerful action by many couples would be to refuse to get married and publicly state the reasons why not."
Andrew and I discussed not getting married until everyone could, and we think that's an understandable choice. Instead, we're trying use our impending marriage as a pro-active way to talk about same sex marriage among our friends and family, and being mindful of the inequity in every step our process. (For example, in our engagement announcement we asked anyone considering getting us a gift to instead donate to an organization fighting for same sex marriage rights; we're planning on saying something about it as part of our ceremony; and we've taken the advice of several commenters and will have cards indicating we've made a donation to said orgs instead of favors.)
Several of you also got into it about dresses - whether the traditional white dress actually did signify "purity," etc. I'm kind of ambivalent about it, but I ended up getting a not-quite white dress (don't want to give too much away in case the boy is reading!) that I bought from a place where all the money goes to charity.
So that's where I'm at so far. I'm sure things will continue to come up and that I'll continue to try and find ways to subvert them or add a little dash of feminism.
In the meantime, does anyone have any feminist wedding planning tips they'd like to share?
This would be funny if not for this: The Vatican agrees with our 50s commercial heroines; their newspaper says that the washing machine did more to liberate modern women than birth control or the "right" to work outside the home. Yeah.
Thanks to Natalie for the video!
This is the shit that makes me want to crawl back in bed and never come out.
Wife-beaters.com, a Dallas-based business that sold wife-beater T-shirts, has been shut down after a San Antonio man complained to the company hosting the site....The Web site sold white tank tops, commonly referred to as "wife-beaters," and gave a discount to anyone who could prove they were convicted of wife beating.
Awesome that it was shut down, but the fact that anyone ever thought this was clever is just massively depressing.
Women's breasts have been called melons, jugs, headlights, hooters and funbags. And now...burgers?
Apparently Arby's thought the best way to capture reader's attention in the latest Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue was to devise some way to make their hamburgers look like tits. Cause what better way to sell fast food than Buns Gone Wild?
And leaving aside the obvious sexism - I'd just like to say that if I were to ever to compare my breasts to food, a couple of cheap ass hamburgers would be the last thing that came to mind. Hmph.
Thanks to Boris for the link.
Check out Virgin Airlines' new ad celebrating their 25th anniversary. Classy all around. I suppose I should be happy that there's no sign of urinals shaped liked women's mouths. Talk about progress!
This advertisement for Chaser clothing was featured in a not-so-recent issue of Flaunt Magazine; it's about a year old but I still think it's too egregious not to point out. (It was the open mouthed thing that really put me over the edge.)
Via Ad Feminem, who has the company and magazine contact info for complaints.
I am getting SO fucking sick of seeing Vagisil commercials. Yes, Vagisil, I get it: you think vaginas are gross and smelly and that women spend all day trying not to scratch desperately at their shame-caves.
The above commercial isn't the latest one I've seen - I saw an ad not five minutes ago for Vagisil wipes that combined a cutesy colorful cartoon look with copy about feeling smelly.
Seriously, Vagisil, I know you're trying to make money by suggesting that women's bodies are in need of constant-deodorizing; but leave my vadge alone!
Shiny Shiny brings us the latest in feminized gear: a pink heart-shaped guitar for Guitar Hero. Okay, I get that some folks like the color, but can I just say I'm so incredibly sick of products being marketed towards women simply by slapping some pink on them?
I mean, there's pink laptops, tools, websites, iPods, pocket knives - even cigarettes! The pink madness has to end. In fact, I think one of my new year's resolutions will be to avoid all things pink (with the exception of cotton candy Jelly Bellys - I love those things).
What's your least favorite pink (or otherwise gendered) product?
Aw shit...I knew this one had to be coming!
Check out JC Penny's new viral marketing campaign for their jewelry line. Not only does it paint men as clueless assholes, but it also promotes the tired idea that all women want is quiche-eating, jewelry buyers. I just find this one insulting all-around.
I'm sure you remember the epically sexist Rose Petal Cottage commercial. About five minutes ago, during a commercial break from Heroes (yes, I like the show) the ad comes on again. I'm already pissed, thinking that this stupid commercial should have been complained off the air months ago. Then something incredible happens. At the end of the standard ad (above) a quick promo for Hasbro's latest disaster, the Sweet Lily Castle, is tacked onto the end.
I can't remember what it said word-for-word, but I swear the last sentence was about letting her have a place where she "can wait for her prince." Seriously. I mean, the frigging castle even comes with a frog to kiss. I think I need to go to bed early tonight. Sigh.
This is an ad for Pantene shampoo. There's also a "blond" version. I'm dumbstruck.
So I watched CNN all day yesterday waiting for the vote on the bailout bill, but I noticed that even though I don't have any money to really lose (just the hope that they may not notice how much debt I have) I still felt stressed out. I also realized that when rich people lose money, it is a national crisis. But poor folk have trouble making ends meet every single day. Where is our news coverage?
The thing with money stress, for most of us, it is always there. So why this panic and media frenzy? Because the Dow Jones dropped? Or because we need to sensationalize everything and create fake scenarios to see how our to be presidents will react? Now, I am not saying that the financial crisis isn't real. Giving out money that doesn't exist will lead to problems. But this has problem didn't happen over night. As Naomi Klein would suggest,
[R]ight-wing governments use the shock generated by disasters or other crises to push through unpopular free-market policies when the population isn't in a position to oppose such programs.
So instead of taking a jab at some shoddy economic analysis (which it seems like a lot of people are doing), I thought I would give you all a chance to share your thoughts on the economic crisis. I realized after watching the news all day I started to feel really panicked and started revisiting all my bills and stressing out about money. I also realized the spending on the war in Iraq is almost as much as the amount that is needed for the bailout.
Talk to me.
So it has taken me days to filter through all the different things going through my head about Burning Man. For those who have never heard, Burning Man is an annual party that attracts almost 50,000 people around the concept of art, life as art, self-sustainability, self-reliance, hedonism and music and to experience all of this in the desert for 1-2 weeks. Living in San Francisco for the last seven years, I certainly crossed paths with many that were life-long burners and had my own preconceived notions of what to expect. Some of what I had heard resonated, but nothing I had ever experienced matched up to going to Burning Man. What does a feminist woman of color see at Burning Man?
Well first and foremost, the art at Burning Man is as incredible as everyone claims it to be. I always hated those people that said, "sorry man, you don't understand, you have to see it to believe it," and I will spare you such proclamations. However, there is something about the huge scale of the art set in the dustiness of the desert that creates surreal visuals that can't be compared to much else I have seen before. The art made my trip to Burning Man worthwhile.
But, you are in the desert with almost 50,000 people in city built in weeks with streets, neighborhoods, themes and entire communities. Obviously you see much more than art. I will attempt to express what I felt, saw and experienced in the most coherent way possible.
The theme of this year's Burning Man was the "American Dream." Sounds corny, but my assumption was that in a space like BM we would see multiple moments of disrupting what we understand to be true of the American Dream. Perhaps new ways of envisioning borders, critical perspectives on the legal status of human beings or anti-war statements. Well, clearly I got a little too post-colonial fantasy making on myself, because every attempt at playing on the theme that I saw at Burning Man, failed. If I saw another American flag/peace symbol juxtaposition I thought I might keel over. When driving in they had quotes posted from key framers of American democracy, Alexis de Toqueville, Milton Friedman, even MLK. But they didn't have a quote from a single woman. Apparently, woman have never had anything to do with the framing, design or development of democracy.
And this time to add to the classiness, they are being marketed as the "Afrika" collection. Please get ready to see self proclaimed, post-racist, ironic hipsters near you wearing this fall trend. You know because this isn't totally racist or anything. This company well never cease to amaze me, in every way. (Unfeminist guilty pleasure soon to come.)
There's a new $1,000 iPhone application called "I Am Rich" that literally does absolutely nothing except signal to other people that you are shallow enough to pay a G to impress your equally shallow friends. This kind of shit really makes me want to puke.
Three of the millions of other ways in which you could spend $1,000: Heifer International, Planned Parenthood, Global Fund for Women.
via Crucial Minutiae via Wired
