What do people think of this advert?
http://brunelstudents.com/files/cabwise2.png
Is it better or worse than this one?
http://www.lynxeffect.com/#/lynx_twist/twist.aspx
(shamelessly moving the discussion from email lists onto the site)
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Can I just say, I don’t want to comment on these two adverts (I’m not actually sure what I think of the first one tbh) but I think it’s important to remember that there are many, many adverts that are much worse, and it could be helpful – maybe on this blog – to list them somewhere and open discussion about them. I vividly remember the abysmal advert for Persil that was on TV last year: after two long minutes of nauseously mawkish statements on motherhood, the final sentence was ‘A mum is someone who uses Persil’. There are so many similar examples, it’s just scary.
I’m French and in France there is an association that exists specifically to denounce sexism in adverts – here’s the link http://www.lameute.fr/index/ . Every year they give a ‘prize’ (the ‘Macho Prize’) to the most sexist advert. They have different ‘categories’ for sexism in adverts, including ‘Nudity unrelated to product’, ‘Sexist clichés’, ‘Violence and Prostitution’. I think they’re doing a great job, especially by lobbying advertising companies, and they regularly manage to get offensive adverts withdrawn. They also organise protests and demonstrations in front of offensive adverts in the metro, in shop windows etc. I think it’s quite a good way to make people realise that they’re surrounded with sexist adverts, because they actually talk to passers-by, explain what the advert is actually saying (most people can’t actually ‘read’ an advert properly and decipher the visual text), etc. It’s a peaceful and legal way of protesting and I think it could be an idea for the group here.
Sounds really good, and I agree that it’s really pertinent to be looking at – and protesting – the wider range of sexist advertising that we’re bombarded by. Lynx is a massive culprit, same with Pepsi and ‘domestic’ adverts. Is there a British equivalent to lameute or something similar?
The worst ‘domestic advert’ at the moment is one for Fairy, where the opening shot of a woman washing dishes in black and white is voiceover-ed “A lots changed in the last fifty years…” cuts to the glorious future of a technicolour kitchen, where a woman wearing jeans (and no apron) is putting fairy liquid capsules into the dishwasher
Thank you! Those Fairy ads have driven me wild with rage. There were two pages of it in my Cosmopolitan this month, celebrating the apparently wonderful British tradition of female unpaid domestic labour “just like your mother and grandmother before you”. My family have now switched to a different brand, but I want to do more – I’m of course going to write to Cosmo, but what else can be done?? Grr this one made me so mad!
BTW, does everyone know that Dove and lynx/axe are part of the same company? While dove promotes real beauty, linx tells men they need to smell better to pull better girls (who are always impossibility shaped and groomed models).
Just saying.
“linx tells men they need to smell better to pull better girls (who are always impossibility shaped and groomed models).”
And usually semi-naked.
Is there any constructive action we could take in terms of directly protesting the advertising agencies/the companies themselves? Would this make a difference?
Clementine, lameute sounds awesome. Like Faith said, do you know if there’s anything similar in the UK? Do you reckon if not we could start something of our own?
Cx
This is well known that money makes people disembarrass. But how to act if somebody has no cash? The one way only is to try to get the credit loans and just short term loan.