While the first in the series might have been really so, I beg to differ on the second. Mellow, OK. Nice soundtrack, apt for what the car is supposed to do to you, OK. What beats me is how an eve teaser depicted as a role model for his younger brother is going down so well with people. You know the ad I'm talking about. Two brothers, the older whistling at a girl, while the younger (he couldn't be more than ten) looks on admiringly. He's thinking 'man, when am I going to be able to whistle like that? What an absolutely marvelous talent it must be, to be able to whistle like that a girl!'. Then he practices, poor kid, while the older brother actually benignly walks around him with a shake of the head. And then, he sees a Linea and the talent comes to him.
Now I don't care if boys whistle, or not, at a Linea. But I do, if the wolf whistle at a girl is being shoved at millions of viewers as a perfectly proper role-modelish thing to do.
And of course, the girl only smiles and walks by. That the smile is saying 'it's naughty but ok' is even more astonishing. But duh. Where have we see THAT stereotype before? Only in a million ads and movie songs, adding fuel to male imaginations that whistling, and eve teasing, sometimes dangerous eve teasing, is just what the girls are desperately waiting for.
Why am I picking on this one particular ad, when there are b'zillion of them out there? Because it's starting to take sexism where it should leave well alone. To children.
It's definitely not the first time children have been used in discriminatory ads. But that's another post.
3 comments:
Haven't seen the ads you refer to in your post and I unfortunately know exactly what you're talking about. Also, isn't it about time we hacked to a million pieces and buried the tired, incredibly misleading euphemism "eve-teasing" and just call it public harassment or street molestation?
I just grabbed lunch from the cafeteria and the man behind the counter who is a familiar face says to me, "Why do you look so serious today? You always have a pretty smile, where is it?" Not harassment by any stretch but WhyTF would I want to sport my smile as an accessory for somebody's viewing pleasure or be talked down to like I'm 6 years old. I had to take a very deep breath before I responded "Maybe it's because I am serious." He wasn't interested in seeing the smiles of the two men standing there with me and waiting on their food. I'll bet their smiles were just as nice. I know some would take the view that the intention was to offer a compliment. But there is a lot to be unpacked in that compliment and more in the unconscious gender based presumptions that lie beneath the intent. That goes back to your point about the whistling lad being positioned as something for young uns to aspire to.
It's definitely harassment. Eve-teasing is a "mild" term and can actually mislead people into believing it's harmless!
And Jay, people who may believe the cafeteria guy may have offered a compliment, I ask, so what? Am I supposed to be grateful for a man's compliments? Or a woman's compliments? There's just no neutrality any more, there is a gender, or a class, or a something associated with every damn word we speak and every damn thing we do. That annoys me more than anything else.
Amen to your comment! There probably never was any neutrality we just didn't know enough to know. It's always a confluence of isms (sexism, racism, classism, homophobism, fatism, ableism, ageism, colorism...)that are particular to the context and the participants.
You could do a whole separate post on the politics of common compliments that are loaded with more than one ism.
Check out the following link. It's a post that ties into the objectification highlighted in your post. http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/10/06/woman-woman-beer-pizza/
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