… ten bundys and she's anyone's!
August 26th, 2008So the story goes like this: A guy who drinks a Certain Drink walks into a party, and to the chagrin of all his mates, manages to pick up the hottest girls there. Four of them, in fact.
Good for you, Heterosexual Advertising Guy! Way to score!
That’s kind of every ad ever made, yes? So why, all of a sudden, is the lucky guy picking up those lovely ladies, no longer a guy?
helloooo lover
Why is the Bundy Bear rocking up to parties and having women fawn all over him and his dyed-pink fur? Wouldn’t he much rather be off picking up lady Polar Bears?
And why is some bloke’s kelpie refusing to bring back his stick because he’s too busy frolicking in a hot tub with four hot XXXX girls?
Why, all of a sudden, are penguins pullin ladies by looking cool as they drive around in their hummer?
Because first of all that last one is biologically inaccurate, and OFFENDS me as a ZOOLOGIST because penguins are serial monogamists and male penguins spend most of their time when they’re not with their partner sitting on eggs and looking after their bbs. I know this because Morgan Freeman told me so in his narration of ‘March of the Penguins’.
See?
And secondly … really? REALLY? I could not be more baffled. Who exactly is the target audience for these ads? I know it can’t be me, because I am totally creeped out by them.
They also clearly don’t work on me, regardless, because I can’t even remember what the stupid penguins in the car are meant to be promoting.
I’ve seen my share of ads that objectify and sexualise women before (after all, I watch football, hoooooome of the sexist advert!), but when did advertisers decide the new way to hook customers was by implying animals have sexual tension with women?
It’s almost as unnerving as that cereal ad where the little boy makes brekkie for his mum and tucks her in bed and basically all-but-implies that he’s become some kind of reverse-gender oedipal substitute for his father. Shudder.
For one thing, implied bestiality is Just Plain Creepy, kthanks. But doesn’t this also represent a whole new level of the “sexual availability” undercurrent in all the previous ads that used women and sexuality as selling tools?
I know part of the objection to this kind of advertising, and the way it feeds into a raunch culture, is that it ingrains the idea that for women there is no higher value to aspire to than sexiness.
The purpose or pinnacle for women becomes nothing more than to be vessels to gratify others, to be available, to be sexually attractive, to be lusted after, and in doing so they rob themselves of their ownsexuality under the guise of being liberated. Eventually no one bothers to think anymore about who or what a woman might want, only whether she’s wantable.
So what does it say when what we are being shown in primetime includes women who are so ready to Be Sexy and to be seen as sexy that they’re not even discerning about species anymore?
Do you know what’s funny to me? When animals act like people! Do you know what’s not funny to me? When apparently women like shagging animals.
Even the animators of Jessica Rabbit had the decency to make her a woman instead of an actual rabbit.
If I’m assuming that all these booze and car ads are in some large part targeted at men, what’s the kicker? Tell me, as a woman, why do these ads make you happy? Why do they make you want to buy things?
PENGUINS CAN’T EVEN DRIVE CARS, YOU KNOW. THEIR FEET WOULDN’T REACH THE PEDALS. GOD.
kiki
sassy
lozzy
interns
