Sexist Ads

by Sun

I like Mad Men (watch online), partly for the peripheral horror, like Gone With The Wind. Perhaps it’s more than peripheral, women are quite frontally denigrated, abused and even raped in the show. These ads are some examples of the misogynist thought at the time. Above, for example, a woman is being spanked for not testing the right coffee. Below a woman is literally being walked on. Some of the more horrifying ones are for feminine douche problems, implying that a man can walk out on a woman if she doesn’t douse her vagina with chemicals. Sample copy – “Is a wife to blame if she doesn’t know these intimate physical facts? Yes!” This is part of the consumerist over-marketing of hygiene I discussed in Bathing Optional, but it’s mostly just sexism. Anyways, here are a few old sexist ads. There are many more at icanhasinternets.

As a modern example of an ad called sexist, here’s a Reebok Ad where the camera constantly pans onto the girls butt. To some degree casual sexism and homophobia are accepted in advertising.

These ads were actually taken down from billboards by Sri Lanka’s new moral police wing, asa per the before and after below.

Before

After

On some level, sex will always sell. But will sexism?

13 Comments

  1. To be honest the Reebok Easy Tone advertisements were a huge hit before it got banned. Banning it got more traffic thru social media outputs.

    But the other adverts from the earlier years are quite terrible!

  3. how do you know it’s the moral police. It could be a group of radical feminist.

  4. Shut your trap and get back to the kitchen you man whore.

  6. Everything in western society is based on sex. Call me baseless? read The evolution of human sex differences by David Geary. So for them I suppose the advert is pretty normal. However I’m sure the bastard culture that we have at the moment makes things pretty confusing. (eg- magerata).

  7. A hugely significant part of all society is based on sex or the repression of sex. Tolerance for sexual imagery may be higher in Western countries, but it’s there, behind the scenes almost everywhere else. Sigiriya is a good example of prudishness being a relatively modern concept, largely fostered around a complex web of contradictory religious morality and quasi-feminist politics.

    If the politicians in SL cared about the wellbeing of young women, they would take a rather tougher line on the daily sexual innuendo and abuse that women receive from ordinary Sri Lankan men. I’ve seen it occasionally, but my female friends tell me it’s a plague.

  8. I agree. There are feminists in SL but radical feminists?
    No way.

  9. How can that Reebok ad be sexist? It’s a shoe that tones your arse, so what’s sexist about showing the benefit in the ad? Would it be sexist then to show a man’s six-pack in an ad for an abshaper or whatever?

  11. It’s sexist because it’s saying that you can get that ass with those shoes… it’s not really possible. It puts a standard up that most women can’t reach and at the same time, it makes the perfect ass seem like a necessary asset. You need to have this, without it, you are less. This is why 1 out of 5 girls have eating disorders today.

  12. Eh, i think there have always been standards of human beauty be it male or female. And there has always been some pressure to achieve this goal. Have you ever seen male model flaunt anything less than the standard six pack.

    The problem you have now a days is that the standards for girls has become ridiculously unhealthily skinny

    http://ethicalstyle.com/wp-content/uploads/ralph-lauren-photoshop-disaster.jpg
    That actually appeared in a magazine cover. achieving such a standard is impossible unless you starve yourself hense all these eating problems. The two reebok girls look quite healthy and athletic looking, as opposed to the drugged out anorexic look.

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