Can we retire the term "politically correct" now?

What does it mean, anyway? I first heard the term back in high school, in the late '80s. A feminist guest speaker was talking to us about sexual harassment and rape. In an open session, I mentioned that I thought it was a good idea for a guy not to walk right behind a woman stranger on a dark or empty street, but rather cross to the other side so she wouldn't be scared. For this, I was pronounced "a very politically correct young man."

That was then. The term was at first applied in a positive manner by late second-wave feminists, to describe a person who was on-side. However, with the backlash that inevitably came during the '90s, the term was appropriated as derision. Today, when someone calls me "politically correct," they're dismissing my opinion as overly-sensitive "politics" (as opposed to reality or common sense).

And that's what American Apparel is doing here, in this billboard shared by Sociological Images' Lisa Wade.

What this says is that when people complain that AA ads are encouraging the sexualization of schoolgirls, fetishizing sexual violence, or just plain exploiting people for fun and profit, they are just sucking up to feminist "politics." The fact that AA is sweatshop-free excuses all this, because their manufacturing is "ethical." Never mind that their founder, Dov Charney, was fired by his own board for "several instances of alleged misconduct" with female employees.

"Politically correct" is dead. This cynical advertising is just flogging its corpse. Time to move on.

K-Y and the sexual objectification of fat middle-aged men

I'm not going to complain too much about this one, because it made me chuckle with a bit of self-effacing irony. But let's watch and see what issues this lube campaign from DDB Toronto raises:



You see, it's funny because the "warming" lube is so effective, the chubby old slob is irresistible to his more put-together wife.



While I think mature men like me can take the hit on our egos, there is another angle to consider here. In an AdWeek post on "Hunkvertising," my social media friend David Gianatasio interviewed another blogger peer, Sociological Images' Lisa Wade, about what the trendy treatment of men as sex objects in advertising actually says about women.

Many ad experts and social critics see the whole thing as a harmless turning of the tables following decades of bikini-clad babes in beer commercials. Double entendres abound when dissecting the trend, the overriding feeling being that it can’t be taken all that seriously because, after all, we are just talking about guys here. “We’re all in on the gender-reversal joke,” explains Lisa Wade, associate professor of sociology at Occidental College. “It’s funny to us to think of women being lustful.”

When the lust is treated even more ironically, as with these men who are not exactly Isaiah Mustafa, both the woman's lust and the man's sexual desirability are the gag.

As Dr. Wade added in her post about the post she was interviewed for, "the joke affirms the gender order because the humor depends on us knowing that we don’t really objectify men this way and we don’t really believe that women are the way we imagine men to be."

And here, the men aren't either. It's good for a laugh, but over the long term is it good for men and women?

Advertising rape culture in anti-rape campaigns

Victim-blaming. It's ugly, it's hurtful, and it's doing nothing to stop people from raping other people.

In the aftermath of the Steubenville rape trial, in which two teenage men were convicted of raping and humiliating an unconscious teenage woman, it's time we had another look at what these supposedly-helpful ads are saying. 

Using some of the post-verdict, victim-blaming Tweets compiled on Sociological Images, I've twinned the infamous ads with their real-life counterpart messages.

The ad above is from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. I wrote about it on Osocio, and it was all over the mainstream media. The ad was pulled from the campaign.

This one is from West Mercia police. When called on it by British feminists, they refused to apologize.

This one isn't even about drinking. It's a "safe taxi" campaign by Transport for London, and note that it has the Mayor and the police endorsing it.

To quote You Are Doing it Wrong: 

Christ. Did anyone pause for even a milli-second, and think, ‘Gee, maybe it’s NOT such a good idea to equate not booking a taxi with certain rape?’. Or did the advertising agency just convince Cabwise that it would provoke attention, and controversy?

Which brings us to my longtime prohibition-era nemesis, MADD:

MADD - Unbuttoned from Esparza Advertising on Vimeo.

Interestingly, when the message is being preached to men, the danger isn't being raped but rather having unwanted sex with somebody unattractive:

It's really bad, folks. People actually think that the only thing standing between a woman and her rape is how she controls herself. She must at all times be sober, fully covered, aloof and safely cloistered away from "bad people". Failure to observe any of these rules makes her responsible for anything violent that happens to her, because men — especially drunk men — have no control and will automatically seek to sexually violate her.

There is hope, however:

Sexual Assault Voices Edmonton, via Osocio.

Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, via Osocio

Via Men Can Stop Rape

Teach your children well. 

Vintage ads showing women as trophy kills

I recently caught this ad on Sociological Images' Twitter feed. While vintage ad sexism is easy enough to find, I'd never seen this one before. It lives on the site for Lucky Tiger, a men's grooming products brand, and Time says it's from 1957.

Apparently, taxidermied women was a thing in the 50s. This one is quite well known:

Via Retronaut

But it was still going on in the '70s:

Via Fashion Rat

Hunting metaphors have long been part of the culture when it comes to "courting", but taking it to its logical conclusion is beyond bizarre.

Chocolate as sex: Not just for women anymore

Jezebel recently ran this picture, an image from the back of this year's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, with the headline "The Back Cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Tells You to Fuck a Piece of Chocolate."

The M&M custom ads for SI's annual spankbank bait is actually a tradition that goes back a few years.

Here's one from 2011:

Via Social Media Trend

Here's 2009:

Via Sociological Images

In fact, the "sexy green M&M" has been part of Mars Inc.'s strategy for several years:

It's intended as a parody. This year's candy pinup is a send-up on the Antarctic cover shot for which Kate Upton almost literally froze her ass off.

At this point, though, I'm not sure the humour is even there anymore. It's the other side of the food-as-sex trope that crosses the streams of primal urges in increasingly weird ways.

My Top Five Posts of 2012

It's been a weird year for me, but I keep coming back to this blog as a way to think out loud about my complicated relationship with the advertising industry (on which I depend to pay my half of the mortgage). Luckily for me, quite a few people have decided that these thoughts are worth reading. Thank you for that. Here were your five favourites.

#5: FHM presents "The 100 sexiest women in nonexistence"
June 18

This was a silly self-parody of FHM's "100 Sexiest Women in the World" list, but open to user nominations and votes featuring imaginary women of fiction, legend, pop culture and advertising. The contest site is no longer live, so I have no idea who won.


#4: Jesus has a quickie with Lady Liberty in Ukrainian shock ad
November 20

This was a joke ad, by someone named Alexander Bozhko for "Altai Fake Festival" — something akin to the Chip Shop Awards. But that didn't stop it from being taken as real, once it showed up on Ads of The World.

Thanks to my Ukrainian friend Eugene Smirnov helped me get to the bottom (heh heh) of this one. Also to Mark Duffy ("Copyranter") who posted my debunking on Buzzfeed, leading to big analytics.


#3 Classic Venus nudes altered for today's beauty standards
February 7

This was a look at how Italian social issues artist Anna Utopia Giordano put classic Venus nudes under the harsh knife of photoshop to make a point about changing beauty standards in media. The post got a lot of viral lift after being linked on Sociological Images.


#2 Topless Female Trampolining World Championships
September 6



What can I say? Certain keywords always lead to high readership.

In this case, the post was a teaser for a campaign by Britain’s CoppaFeel! and Male Cancer Awareness Campaign (MCAC) about male breast cancer. I followed it up on Osocio.


#1 Train etiquette campaign parodies are "super simple stuff"
June 26

My most-clicked post of 2012 was a bit of a surprise to me, as it had no naked ladies in it whatsoever. It's about how a public transit etiquette campaign by Queensland Rail became a popular parody meme. I guess I need more like that.


Well, that's all for me in 2012. This year, I have give this blog a little more focus on the issues that are of most professional interest to me, particularly ethics. (Which is why the name is changing.)

But what would you like to see more of? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.

Wishing a most wholesome Thanksgiving to my American readers

Here's how Canada contributed to your awkward family moments in 1936. Keep that creepy uncle of yours off the rye!

Via Sociological Images

HP: The Official Brown Sauce of Yobs?

Lucy Clark, senior brand manager at HP, told The Drum:

"As this is the first HP TV advert in five years, we wanted to implement a high-impact multimedia campaign around it that’s packed full of attitude and grabs the attention of younger male consumers, reminding them that the big, bold flavour of HP Sauce is the ultimate sauce of manliness for a bacon sandwich.”

Ultimate sauce of manliness? Oh.



Carrie Hindmarsh, CEO at M&C Saatchi, said of their work:

“At last, after a five year absence, HP is back with a brand new campaign – to reveal the simple, unvarnished truth about modern men. This ad neatly sums up what modern manliness means – a love of sport, mastering DIY and of course, HP Sauce.”

The campaign is aimed at men between the ages of 25 and 44, who buy into the "we're just a bunch of stupid little boys who are not responsible for our actions" trope.

I know, I know. It's humour. It's also an example of what Sociological Images' Lisa Wade has called "an anti-intellectualism that is specifically male."

It looks fairly harmless, and it probably is. And advertising does not create social trends, it reflects and reinforces them. I'm just saying that it is a tired and annoying one. Even if it ends up selling more "sauce of manliness" to those who like to be categorized this way.

Also, "Manwich"? Taken:

Really taken:

I wonder how the "ultimate sauce of manliness" works into that one?

Native North Americans are not impressed with the cultural appropriation in your marketing

Sociological Images' Gwen Sharp just wrote an interesting post about Paul Frank's event for Fashion’s Night Out, which "reflects the widespread appropriation of Native American cultures in fashion over the last few years." She described the event as including a dress-up game with stereotyped Native American garb, and photo opportunities. It's important reading for marketers, as is the original post at the Native Appropriations blog by Cherokee writer Adrienne K.

She wrote (directly to Paul Frank), "The bottom line is this: your event stereotypes and demeans Native cultures, collapsing hundreds of distinct tribal and cultural groups into one 'tribal' mish-mash, thereby erasing our individual identities and contemporary existence."

Here's one of her screencaps:

Coincidentally, just yesterday I captured this campaign for an art exhibition at Ottawa's Gallery 101 by Joi T Arcand of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, Saskatchewan, called oskinikiskwēwak ("young women"). It looks at the problem of pop culture appropriation of native culture from the other side:

"Look! More Neechies!"
"Nah, it's just hipsters in headdresses."

It's part of a series of works that mock stereotypes with wit and style.

This isn't the 1950s, my friends. (Especially those of you at Red Light PR.) Native Americans and Canada's First Nations people see what you did there. And they will call you on it.

The sun will turn your girlfriend into her mother #FdAdFriday

Gwen Sharp at Sociological Images posted this weird PSA from the Belgian Cancer Foundation, translating the message as "ladies, if you don’t do what we say, you’ll be hideous and your guy won’t want you any more."



I am told that Belgian humour is pretty special, so perhaps this ad is taken differently there. Perhaps it's dating me, but from a purely instinctive position I don't find the moms to be unattractive.

The idea of sun damage prematurely aging skin is a solid one. But the risk is more than aging; it's damage. And cancer. And even death.

But that lacks candid camera hilarity, I guess.

Smarter people than me are also fascinated by it

Sex in advertising, that is.

Lisa Wade, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Occidental College and a blogger at Sociological Images. As she often takes on the issue of sex and sexism in advertising and other media, we often end up sharing links.

The most recent one she shared (via Facebook) is a Pinterest board of ads that use subliminal, and not so subliminal, sexual symbolism.

And by "not subliminal", she means stuff like this:

And this:

And...

Some are subversive:

Others are rather creative:

As an educator, Lisa provides links to analyses of the images. As an adman (and ad critic), I find this both useful and entertaining. Here's hoping the Sexual Symbolism board will continue to expand, and that people will actually learn to make and/or identify better ads because of it.

Kraft's "mixed race" snack ad is all kinds of wrong #FdAdFriday

I'll let Bradley Koch from Sociological Images take it from here:

"The problem with a marketing campaign like this is that it trivializes the experience of people with multiple racial/ethnic identities who are still often met with derision and confusion. The first ad above perpetuates the self-fulfilling prophecy about “confused” identities. As a child, I remember family members telling me that they didn’t have a problem with interracial couples but worried about how others might react to their children."

Yeah, what he said.

And Kraft just keeps going and going with the awkward and inappropriately racialized gags.









WTF?

I miss the good old days of ugly Lego

This Lego ad, from about 1981, is immensely popular on the internet circa 2012. It, and two others of the same vintage, were recently featured on the academic blog Sociological Images as examples of gender-neutral marketing of children's toys.

SI's Lisa Wade contrasts the Lego of her childhood with today's more gendered Lego sets for girls that put women back in the kitchen:

Or the beauty shop:

Granted, there are lots of different Legos for kids, but this is the one Mastermind Toys lists as "a brand new LEGO world for girls!"

I get it. I only have a son myself, but all of his little girl friends have totally bought into this whole "princess" thing — even though their parents are socially progressive yuppies like me. Kids should be able to (safely and responsibly) play however they want with whatever they have (my son has started making "spy weapons" out of cardboard tubes) so is there really a problem here?

Lisa writes, "In the circles I run in, it’s being roundly criticized for reproducing stereotypes of girls and women: domesticity, vanity, materialism, and an obsession with everything being pastel."

By the way, this controversy is a few months old already. What inspired me to weigh in was an even older Lego image, from a 1973 catalogue, that was featured on Retronaut:

This was around the time when I started playing with the iconic blocks, almost 40 years ago. Note that the craptacular ambulance built by 5-year-old "Maria" could have just as easily been built by "Mario".

And then it hit me what the real problem is.

Lego stopped being a "blank slate" imagination toy sometime in the '80s. While you can still buy plain blocks if you look hard enough, Lego is now much more about getting kids to act out branded and scripted narratives than asking them to start from scratch.

Here's an example. It's the bio of "Emma", one of the Lego Friends:

Favorite animal: Horse, Robin
Hair color: Black
Favorite color: Purple
Favorite food: Fruits and veggies. And chocolate. And cupcakes. And pizza…
I love: Designing clothes and jewelry, crafts, interior decorating, remodeling and horseback jumping.
I’m also good at: Yoga, giving makeovers, martial arts, making origami animals.
My friends think I’m sometimes: Forgetful, but I never forget to accessorize.
I want to be: A designer
Motto: “That’s SO you!”
I would never: Leave home in clothes and accessories that don’t match!
I like to hang out: At the beauty salon and my design studio.

There is literally nothing left to the imagination here.

Toys representing fictional characters with complex backstories existed when I was a kid, too, but not in Lego form. Instead they were "dolls" and "action figures".

I still have mine.

So my question is, should Lego be held to account for defining and gendering the play narrative for its dolls and action figures more than any other toy company?

To be fair, no. Parents do not have to buy these sets for their daughters, and they could well buy kitchen sets for their sons. It's just another company in the business of making money by giving kids (and parents) what they say they want.

I think the real shame here is that a classic toy that engaged children in unique imagination exercises 30 or 40 years ago has become just another product tie-in to increasingly monotonous children's entertainment. And part of this monotony is the cute girlie-girl thing.

I just miss my ugly, impractical Lego machines and houses. And I miss ads that sell nothing more than imagination. But then again, I miss being able to lose myself in a bucket of plastic bricks for an entire afternoon.

There is hope, though. In some places, Lego and its advertising still rock.

Check out this German campaign that shows retro lego geniuses. And this amazing Russian campaign that turns Lego kits into something else. And this fantastically minimalist American one from 2006.

Vodka: Liquid underwear remover #FdAdFriday

Sociological Images' Lisa Wade found this old Smirnoff ad on Retronaut. She writes, "The message, of course, is not that a woman who drinks the vodka will become politicized; instead, it is that Smirnoff will 'loosen her up' and facilitate seduction."

Ah, how times have changed...

The Daily Femme's Cherie wrote, "At first, I thought it was tied to some article critiquing the offensive and sexist advertisements of the 1950s and 60s but quickly realized this was nothing more than an advertisement in 2010."

Hmmm...