I think this may even beat “You poke it, you own it.”
(or browse the Archives by date, category, tags etc)
get blog updates
Recent Comments
- Anecdotal on This Is What Happened to CeCe
- Anecdotal on This Is What Happened to CeCe
- Jeanne on This Is What Happened to CeCe
- April on This Is What Happened to CeCe
- Argenti Aertheri on This Is What Happened to CeCe
- DonnaL on This Is What Happened to CeCe
- Azalea on The Annual Post About Sexist Super Bowl Commercials 2012
- Azalea on The Annual Post About Sexist Super Bowl Commercials 2012
- Drew on Prudie on “real” rape
- Iany on Pete Hoekstra is super racist, doesn’t understand the word “satire”
Most Commented Recent Posts
- An Asexual Map for Sex-Positive Feminism (138)
- Women refuses to give raped daughter EC, brags about it on internet. (129)
- So should we just start calling high heels "body modification"? (128)
- Some Transformative Justice Links (127)
- Prudie on "real" rape (118)
- FNTT Season 8, Round 1: the "So a girl and a vibrator walk onto a plane..." edition (89)
- FNTT Season 8, Round 1: the REAL FEMINISTS edition (77)
- "Kill the Gays" Bill is Back in Uganda (74)
- Facts, myths, and blankety-blank lies about Planned Parenthood and the Susan G. Komen Foundation (65)
- FNTT Season 8, Round 1: The Baby-Killing Whores Edition (63)
Yes Means Yes!
Reproductive Health Matters
We’re in the Guardian
More of Feministe On
For wordpress.com support
just for you, a widget as requested
Sponsored By
Tried and Tested
The authors of this website have hand-selected these titles because we believe they may be of interest to a feminist audience.
Consider them for gifts to friends, family, or yourself! We do receive some income if you choose to order these titles based on our recommendations. All funds help support our costs to provide this space.
Consider them for gifts to friends, family, or yourself! We do receive some income if you choose to order these titles based on our recommendations. All funds help support our costs to provide this space.
I think it’s liquor, not beer.
But holy cow, how can they even pretend that’s not disturbing?
Does anyone ever advertise alcohol to women? I’m trying to imagine what such an ad would look like and utterly failing.
They can’t advertise beer to women. Beer makes you feel good, and the point of advertising to women is to make us feel bad.
No it’s not a beer.. it’s a liquor and it tastes awful.
I myself had the great pleasure of actually seeing this one television.. it pissed me off then. I think the worst part of ads like this, or jokes of this is that it’s always the men who have to put up with so much from women, the idea that women might have to put up with bullshit from men, in relationships or otherwise, is rarely given much sympathy.. let alone justifying outright violence.
Oh and in a country where women pretty much drink as much as men, this advertising is really stupid.
wow that actually made me gasp.
Oh my god, when she started to deflate and her head caved in, all I could think of was skull fractures.
That is amazingly offensive.
Hanna, how about this:
“Jagermeister: self-medicate the patriarchy away.”
I’m a teetotaler. But I wonder if I were a woman in this culture, would I drink just to make the constant barrage stop? I’m a het white guy, and I can stick my fingers in my ears and get a break from the constant drumbeat that women are objects or second-class citizens or Gammas or obstacles; my spouse and my sister and my daughter can’t do that and I can’t imagine how they cope. Seriously.
Does anyone ever advertise alcohol to women?
Nope. Because the advertisers fear men will think of it as a “chick drink” and avoid it.
Oh, and the other reason they don’t advertise alcohol to women is because the ways alcohol is supposed to appeal to women (e.g., “doesn’t taste like crap”) are also regarded as appealing to minors. What this says about our conception of women is left as an exercise to the reader.
“What this says about our conception of women is left as an exercise to the reader.”
That one’s probably less about society’s conception of women and more about society’s propensity to overreach when it comes to demon rum and its evil schemes to get its claws on the tender flower of our precious, vulnerable youth. Won’t somebody please think of the children!, etc.
Anything not specifically marketed to 25-30-somethings who see their beer guts and lack of any grooming more advanced than the occasional bath as the basis of their masculinity is pointed to as “targeting minors.” My guess would be that the people doing the pointing, who often like to act as if alcohol manufacturers are evil and actively trying to promote underage drinking (possibly with the intention of killing teens to please their dark lord), don’t even have adult females on their radar.
You get that weird sense that they’re still seeing things in term of the Prohibitionists, where girls might suffer from being tempted to indulge, but women are just martyred to the indulgences of the men around them. When they see an ad that promotes a non-gendered, non-ball-clutching “whoo, alcohol” view, the idea that it could be targeting women doesn’t even cross their minds. It’s not marketed towards men, women don’t drink, ergo it’s targeting minors. Never mind that nobody’s running commercials in which Drinky Winky tells grade-schoolers to get into their parents’ liquor cabinet if they want everyone to love them. Never mind that it’s incredibly difficult to market towards legal-to-drink young adults (or even really say “Our product is completely awesome”) without appealing to both the 18-20-year-old segment that’s adult-but-still-underage and the 14-17-year-olds eager to appropriate the trappings of the college set. Never mind that women actually drink. It’s a moral crusade, hung more on ideology and a desire to punish than an accurate view of the problem and effective countermeasures.
That said, if booze was marketed toward women the way it was toward men–shirk your responsibilities! cavort with younger, hotter members of the opposite sex! have a rocking time without having to justify it or answer to anyone over it!–the societal head-explosion could probably be heard from the moon, which is rather an accomplishment.
*woo threaddrift*
I don’t drink either. I cope by knowing that none of it is true. The real stressor is the resulting annoyance/anger with being constantly told noxious and hateful lies about myself. I tend to mostly develop contempt towards the people and social structures that spew the garbage. I think that contempt is less stressful to experience then constant fury. Though constant fury would be pretty justified by all this shit.
Being at work, I can’t watch the ad. Can someone write a description please?
But it’s for Jagermeister? Such a shame…I love that drink.
There’s that ridiculous Disaronno ad with the attractive woman and the attractive bartender. That one seems to be marketing to faux-artsy yuppies everywhere.
Violetfishy, a guy is on a beach and the women next to him, who is conventionally attractive and thin but made up to look bad, is talking constantly in an unpleasant tone in a language I can’t identify. The social trope is that we’re supposed to understand that she’s nagging. He reaches behind her and pulls the sort of valve that inflatable pool toys have, and she slowly deflates, her head and face caving in alarmingly. He rolls her up. In the next scene, he is drinking the advertised liquor in a chair next to another guy in silence, and they clink bottles.
It’s not for Jagermeister. I pulled that out of nowhere. The name of the liquor is something I have never heard of.
well, Red Stapler, it worked for me.
Roxie:
Hey, they were both attractive, and I dig me some amaretto sours.
Could part of this be American culture’s split love-hate relationship with alcohol throughout its history from widespread usage to periodic moralistic protests culminating in prohibition which brought its own problems?
Moreover, is part of the conception of alcohol being advertised mostly to men in additional to being plain old sexism also a remnant of Victorian morality, Women being a visible part of the prohibitionist/moralistic ban movements, seen as moral do-gooders/American cultural conscience, and thus, not only a “waste of time” in the eyes of alcohol marketers, but possible underlying fears “sullying our women” if it is marketed towards women…as nonsensical and contradictory as that sounds judging by this and other alcohol ads?
Disclaimer: I am a quasi-tee-totaler as I drink moderately only on social occasions and when I feel like it….which over the last year I can count on the fingers of one hand.
I have seen one ad… I think it was for Budweiser, but I’m really not sure. It was some domestic beer, which in Canada includes brands like Labatt and Molson, obviously.
Anyway, there were two ads. One had a bunch of guys escaping from the city for the weekend and heading to their cabin/cottage/lake house (whatever you want to call it) and drinking a few by the docks, when they notice some women on the other side of the lake. The other ad is basically exactly the same, but it’s from the perspective of the women who are relaxing at the lake for exactly the same reason, with a few beers.
There’s a whole heterosexist sexual dynamic to the ad that was a little annoying, but the idea that women work hard and like to chill with their friends and a few beers out by the lake? How often do we get to see women treated as real people with normal, understandable motivations like that? They’re usually orgasmically snacking on chocolate or yoghurt while dancing around with a Swiffer and packing lunch for little kids while playing some guy’s pretty-object-of-the-night in a bar. (Not all at the same time, but you know what I mean.)
There’s also a Moosehead ad where a bunch of guys are going sailing, and a couple of women (girlfriends, I guess,) are saying goodbye at the dock. The guys are sailing away when one of the women notices that they left a bottle of beer behind, and the guys freak out and beg her to throw it. She sprints across the dock, jumping over various objects, and we see her arm arc as she prepares to throw the bottle… and then she doesn’t. She waves sweetly and keeps the beer for herself while the men look on mournfully. I’m not sure if that one really counts, though.
For me its annoying white noise which never comes to the surface until it causes my paycheck to be smaller, men to dismiss me because I don’t play the game, or women to hate me. Then it becomes a thundering avalanche of rage.
I once saw a Schlitz ad that showed a woman, retreating in the kitchen away from the household responsibilities to have a beer. It was creepy to me as it looked like the picture of an alcoholic. The other was for O’Doul’s, with a pregnant woman sitting at a bar. Both of the commercials did not sit well with me. Neither had the ‘good times’ theme of the male centered ads, which of course made them suck royally, because without the mythology of the ‘good times’, what is drinking anyway but imbibing in a very addictive substance?
The one with the pregnant woman in a bar made me cringe as I’ve seen my share of FAS children and drunken pregnant woman.
“The one with the pregnant woman in a bar made me cringe as I’ve seen my share of FAS children and drunken pregnant woman.”
…isn’t O’Doul’s a non-alcoholic beer?
Fernet Stock is a popular liqueur in the czech republic. Stock is the name of the company. They have a version, Fernet Stock Citrus, that is aimed specifically at women drinkers. Wonder whether this ad has turned women off to that product.
The target for the ad, I would think, is a man who is not attractive to women and doesn’t have a bikinied girlfriend to lie on the beach with him. The ad is designed to reassure him that he’s better off without a girl and that getting plastered with the guys is better than sex.
Exactly. It’s the old idea that girls will watch movies/read books/play video games about men, things that are considered ‘boy stuff’ — but boys will not do the same things in reverse. Having something branded with the Man Stamp of Approval makes it into a status symbol, but having something marked “girly” makes it something to generally be mocked and marginalized. (jfpbookworm, you also make a good point about the connection between marketing towards women and children.)
It has a significantly reduced alcohol content, but that’s not what got me, its that any alcoholic would look at that and find another good rationalization to have on at the bar. It just seemed too close.
Might I also add to my response to Thomas about how women can ‘take it’ everyday. They don’t too well over all, women by far suffer from depression and personality disorders than men, most I attribute to having to cope with a horrendous abuse and oppression.
It has a significantly reduced alcohol content, but that’s not what got me, its that any alcoholic would look at that and find another good rationalization to have on at the bar. It just seemed too close.
Might I also add to my response to Thomas about how women can ‘take it’ everyday. They don’t too well over all, women by far suffer more from depression and personality disorders than men, most many would attribute to having to cope with horrendous abuse and oppression.
I’ve seen a couple of beer ads (in Canada) that I think are targeting women, but only for light and/or low-cal beers. Typical.
Well, there was this one ad with a female bartender talking about how her significant other just wasn’t good enough for her and didn’t even try anymore and —
Oh. Wait, sorry, that was an ad for Swiffer and the bartender was talking to a dirty mop.
I don’t think that the beer ad is the worst ever, even though it comes pretty damn close. Commercials like that is why I don’t drink any kind of alcoholic product. All commercials for alcoholic products are very sexist.
That women are equated with children.
Adorable little nuisances you wish you could just roll up and stuff in a satchel when you’ve had quite enough of them and their annoying tendency to produce sounds with their mouths.
Children don’t have it so good either, but that’s another topic (or is it?)
This commercial gives me that murderous feeling.
So sexist, it didn’t even need subtitles.
Do women need alcohol marketed to them in a positive way?
In portugal, a beer company made an ad just for heterosexuals. “Hetero Pride”, they said.
Look here: http://www.tagus.pt/homepage
Also watch Panteras Rosa blog – a activist group for lgbt rights. genious! http://panterasrosa.blogspot.com/2007/11/panteras-rosa-apoiam-cerveja-tagus.html
Cheers!
The creepy Bailey’s ads here in Canada seem to be targeted at women. They’re about how a party (always a white, upper middle class party with quiet music and lots of laughter) is made perfect by Bailey’s. And how drinking it is just a little naughty. I find the ads seriously annoying.
This Jagermeister ad is beyond terrible.
In the late 80s or early 90s, Michelob had a campaign which appeared in Glamour, etc. which featured the light beer, but touted the taste saying that the lesser calories weren’t important because you’re perfect the way you are. And there’s one where some women buy a guy a beer as a way to approach/flirt with him. But I don’t remember the details of that one.
But you gotta admit, sometimes you just need that escape, whether you are a man or a woman.