The Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame Has a New Home!

The Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame has moved to The Seething Cauldron: a new Feminist collective blog. The Seething Cauldron is looking for both recommendations of misogynistic ads as well as contributors. Submissions can be made to seethincauldronblog@gmail.com. 

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Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: Gillette Razors; with a side order of Domestic Violence.

I first came across the new Gillette Razor's campaign via Stavver's blog. I just clicked the link, thought WTF and then retweeted. Stavver's already said everything I would have so it seemed redundant to repeat it.  It's the usual vile heteronormative arsehattery which insists that women must pass the Patriarchal Fuckability Test at ALL times. I would have ignored it and continued in my refusal to shave my leg hair. This was until Leah Hardy pointed out that one of the images is of domestic violence. If you click on the mirror, question 4 is this image:

That first image blown up:

That is most definitely an image of a woman screaming whilst her partner's fist is clenched and he is grabbing her. 

The blog It's Just a Hobby suggest we all complain to Gillette here. I will also be complaining to the Advertising Standards Authority. This is an ad campaign that needs to be removed. Gillette needs to be apologise and then donate a very large sum of money to Women's Aid.

UPDATE: Apparently, if you can believe this, Gillette claims that the campaign wasn't meant to go live today [see here]. I'm sure they will be back soon with some piece of faux apology with will blame one employee for making the campaign go "live" without addressing the fact that more than one person will have been involved in this arsehattery from at least two companies: Gillette and the advertising company responsible for the campaign. Whether or not Gillette meant to go "live" is irrelevant at this point. What is relevant is that a large multi-national corporation has created a huge web-based advertising campaign which includes an image of domestic violence as punishment for not shaving one's legs. It doesn't matter how they run it from here, I won't be buying Gillette again. Erm, if I already weren't boycotting them for being the nincompoops responsible for the Proud Sponsor of Mums campaign. Oddly, I'm beginning to see a pattern here.

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How to tell if you're racist:

If you agree with this arsehole, then you're probably a racist. I say probably only insofar as it's equally possible you're just really, really stupid. Tom Brodbeck, of the Winnipeg Sun, has written quite possibly one of the most ridiculous examples of white privilege I've come across in a while. Basically, he's arguing that it's racist for the Manitoba government to focus on the violence experienced by Aboriginal women and develop specific strategies to help these women, despite the fact that they are more likely to experience VAW or be murdered by their partners than non-Aboriginal women. Apparently, developing any strategies which are specifically targeted at one group of incredibly vulnerable women is "racist". 

This is what he actually says about the fact that Aboriginal women are three times more likely to experience violence, in any form, that non-First Nations, Metis and Inuit

But what should any of that matter when it comes to finding more effective policing and public policy strategies to combat the problem of missing and murdered women?
Should police agencies treat missing and murdered aboriginal women differently than women from other ethnicities?

It's pretty fucking obvious that the police already treat missing and murdered Aboriginal women differently than they do missing or murdered white women. After all, does anyone really believe that Robert Pickton would have managed to kill as many women as he did if his victims weren't vulnerable Aboriginal women trapped in prostitution? I don't. 

Thing is, Brodbeck clearly doesn't give a shit about Aboriginal women. No one who cares about the racism and misogyny experienced by Aboriginal women would be so arrogant as to say this:

Singling out missing and murdered aboriginal women is racist, plain and simple. We shouldn’t judge, treat, or deal with people based on their ethnicity.

Nor would they be so arrogant as to quote the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as if it was applied equally to all citizens and residents of Canada. This is just another example of white male privilege trying to minimise and isolate women to prevent us rising up as a class to Smash the Patriarchy. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is just a piece of paper. It is only as good as its enforcement and, frankly, Canada's history of enforcing this legislation is shameful.

We will never be able to Smash the Patriarchy without acknowledging the way it uses racism, homophobia, disabilism and misogyny to isolate women. Acknowledging that Aboriginal women are more likely to be victims of Violence Against Women isn't racist. It's stating the fucking obvious.

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I love my Mooncup

My lovely friend FrothyDragon* has been ranting about the misogynistic twaddle which are the Always "Have a Happy Period" ads here. I hate them. I hate them a lot. I have ranted about my hatred of them here. I have been desperately pretending they don't exist but the freaking campaign never stops. It's like Boots. They've found some misogynistic drivel that they think works and keep using it. But, it ain't working here anymore. The only thing these stupid ads have done is convince me to buy a mooncup and I love my mooncup. It isn't perfect and there is an unfortunate squelching noise; a really unfortunate squelching noise. But, buying a mooncup means never having to financially support the nincompoops at Always and the dingbats at the advertising company they hired which can only be a good thing.

I also have some washable pads that I bought from here. I have some pink camouflage ones which make me smile. It's the only time pink camouflage is ever a good look. On anyone. I'm not quite at the stage where I think rinsing menstrual blood out of pads is a powerful testament to sisterhood but I love that it makes my friend feel strong. And, it is a powerful way of telling the Patriarchy to Fuck Off.

*If you haven't clicked the link to Frothy's blog, do so now.

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Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: It's Boots. Again

I hate the Boots Here Come the Girls ads. I think they are misogynistic twaddle and glorify the objectification of women's bodies, the fetishisation of "girls" and construct women as shallow, narcissists with serious addiction problems [notably shopping which can be self-destructive when compulsive]. I try not to let the kids watch ads so we record things before we watch them. Unfortunately, Boots has now taken to advertising before the Kids Club movie at Vue Cinema. And, they have surpassed themselves with the misogyny in their new campaign, although not with creativity since they have liberally "borrowed" from Galaxy's "women have to hide chocolate bars around the house so no one knows they eat chocolate" twaddle. 

Boots' pre-movie Here Come the Girls ad now features a woman staring with glee into a locked box full of chocolate bars. As I said with the Galaxy ads, 

Hiding food isn't the sign of a woman with a healthy relationship to food. Its quite a serious red flag for eating disorders. This ad simply fetishises eating disorders as something that all women should aspire too. ... I turn off the TV every time I see this ad because it makes me sad and utterly fucked off with a society that treats women eating as a social taboo.

The old Boots ads are bad enough. They feature women with compulsive behaviour problems and women trapped in marriages with men who are selfish and rude. They reinforce the idea that women's bodies are inherently ugly and that we can not be seen in public without covering ourselves in make-up and expensive skin creams, all the while getting our daily vitamin intake from pills whilst we stop eating to desperately lose that extra 10 pounds so we won't be fat too. But, now, we are not only ugly and fat, we are being encouraged to fetishise chocolate. No doubt, so that we will then be back at Boots buying weight loss products. The entire campaign is degrading to women. 

And, don't get me started on the word "girls". God forbid we get to be strong, intelligent, resourceful, and kind women with real needs and desires. Nope, we get to be infantilised and demeaned whilst hiding chocolate in locked boxes.

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Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: Samsung's Smart TV's Seductive Emotion

Because the only way to sell a TV to men is to have an advertisement, run before the Kids' Club Movie*, starring a woman in her underwear being stared at by a building full of men incapable of thinking with anything other than their cocks: 

Because it is not at all frightening or creepy to find a couple of hundred men, some old enough to be your father, show up at your door salivating with lust. It's what every girl dreams of at night: some middle-aged arsehole who you've never met rocking up at your door with an erection. Nothing says desperate loser more.

No doubt, if one of them turned out to be a sexual predator, it would have been her fault for getting raped because she "enticed" them with her sexiness. Whilst watching the fucking TV. Because no woman is safe in their own home from predatory men. I mean, Reddit's proved that women's bodies are fair game in public. Why not in private too? God forbid, women think they are entitled to any privacy. 

Does Samsung realise women watch TV too? That I'm definitely not going to buy a TV whose entire ad campaign is based on perpetuating and perpetrating rape culture? Cus, it's not happening. 

Also, why is this commercial appropriate for an audience of small children? Does Samsung think 4 year old boys are so obsessed with tits that they are going to make their fathers run and buy a new TV so they can see a pair? 

And, why don't more men find this kind of advertising offensive? It's just said that all men are sex-obsessed losers with no self-control? Do none of you find that a tad rude? Or, objectionable?

*Okay, this is a bit a theme recently. I can safely say, bar an outbreak of the plague, I will not be taking small to see anymore kids' club movies because I clearly can not handle the rage-inducing levels of misogyny. At least, I won't until the get rid of Aquafresh's Nurdle World which is just the most appalling gender stereotyped shit that even Disney would struggle to match. After that, I might reassess the situation but only because it's raining. Again. 

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Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: Jean Paul Gaultier Does Diet Coke

Jean Paul Gaultier is designing limited edition Diet Coke bottles. Because, obviously, Diet Coke has run out of ideas on misogynistic advertising and has gone the desperate route of  paying a fashion designer to paint their bottles. After all, it is so uber-cool to show a man's face on a women's body. That isn't at all creepy:

And, there is nothing weird at all about painting the naked body of model Daisy Lowe to look like a beverage:

Oh, look the launch features burlesque and the women as Barbie dolls trope. Gosh, that's ultra exciting and has totally never, ever been done before:

This isn't the first campaign Gaultier has designed for Diet Coke. He is also responsible for the creepy doll commercials. That would be the campaign which officially stopped me drinking Diet Coke. Because, they were creepy and not in a Chuckie kind of way but in a porny, women are nothing more than fucktoys kind of way. I have to say I was not aware he was also responsible for this shite but it doesn't really surprise me. After all, the fashion industry is noted for its general hatred of women.

Diet Coke have done this before. This was the effort of  Karl Lagerfield, the quintessential misogynist who is forever labelling women fat and therefore unfuckable: 

Would it be too much to ask for a product aimed at women not to be women-hating bullshit designed to make us all feel like failures in the Patriarchal Fuckability Test? Really?

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Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: Vagenda Knocks Them Down

These images are taken from a blogpost on Vagenda. I think they've brilliantly deconstructed the misogyny. But, sometimes, you just need to look at the images a second time to fully understand the WTF?  bit. [Or, a third time in this case].*

**

***

*Between, Kookai definitely don't sell yogurt. I googled just in case there were two companies called Kookai. There aren't.

**Surely, PETA should be starting a campaign against French Connection now. That way, we can admire the misogyny squared.

*** Pot Noodle: The Lynx Effect of Food. Only eat them if you have a penis and are stupid****

****Not everyone with a penis is stupid so please don't bother posting that level of nincompoopery as a comment.

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Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: Estee Lauder

Sophie Barnes has already written an excellent critique of the unrelenting stupidity and just all around arrogance of this product in the New Statesman. Estee Lauder's new Advanced Night Repair comes with the tagline: "The revolutionary repair formulas millions of women can't live without." As Barnes says:

Turns out the one thing that women require as a basic need the world over is anti-aging cream. No, not clean running water or access to electricity. Not even the oxygen we breathe is as crucial or as life-sustaining as holding off those wrinkles, ladies. This isn't just that we'd quite like healthy, younger-looking skin - no, it's not that flippant. We NEED a youthful, bouncy complexion - our very lives depend on it. 

Who knew? Women could actually die from having wrinkles. I'm so glad Estee Lauder has brought this to my attention. Now, I know the secret to eternal life is some over-priced anti-aging cream. All those centuries alchemists spent looking for the Philosopher's stone trying to turn base metals into gold and live forever were wasted. All we need is some anti-aging cream because being old is, well, practically a crime. Next thing, women with wrinkles will be imprisoned for failing the Patriarchal Fuckability Test. 

So, I'm adding Estee Lauder to the boycott list for being offensive, stupid and totally lacking in an understanding of the real problems we face as humans.

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Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: Eurostar's Tedious Twaddle

These are some of Eurostar's Post-Olympic ads which "invite customers to bring a little something back" with them. Granted, these aren't quite as horrific as the MyCheck ad starring Bar Rafaeli but they are so utterly tedious with the monotonous sexism. The second one definitely comes with an undercurrent of slut-shaming; just to be extra exciting.

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Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: Apparently, Rape is Funny via MyCheck

I'd like to think this is a joke. That no one would be so utterly stupid as to think rape and murder are acceptable advertising campaigns but we all know that's precisely the kind of shit that gets advertising execs all hot and horny. After all, MAC only pulled the Ciudad Juarez limited edition make-up line after customers complained. Apparently, no one at MAC quite understood that naming make-up after a Mexican border town imploding due to drug violence and the systemic mass murder of women might be considered, well, in poor taste. Probably they all failed kindergarten or never saw Sesame Street. Even Oscar the Grouch could have worked out that naming make up after systemic VAW was just a little bit rude.

A campaign for an App, of all the stupid shit possible, which includes the use of a date rape drug and ends with the a man sharpening a knife in a room full of unconscious [or already dead] tied up women really is scrapping the barrel of indecency. Jezebel has already called MyCheck on its misogyny; as has the Israeli Times but do we really need advertising campaigns to get to this point before they are pulled. Surely, someone in advertising somewhere gets that systemic VAW isn't funny or clever. 

This is "edited version" of the video. The article in Jezebel contains a link to the original video in its entirety: 

I'm sure someone will be along soon to inform me that I can just not purchase the App but that really isn't the point. I'd like the entire advertising industry to remove their collective brains from wherever they have stored them and just stop making this shit. Is that really too much to ask?

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Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: The Victoria Secrets Barcode Puzzle Box

So, I'm way behind the times on these ads since they apparently date back to the summer of 2011. They have, however, just appeared in my FB news feed via Any-Body, who are an organisation well worth following. These ads are so disturbing that I'm not quite sure where to start. Victoria's Secret having been pushing the boundaries of television and advertising for several years now making the sexualisation and objectification of women's bodies mainstream in a way Hugh Hefner tried but didn't quite get. They used to air the annual Victoria Secrets Fashion show on TV in the US; a program full of nearly nude women with angel wings conflating sexuality with religious iconography. I have no idea if they still do and I really don't want to google it to find out. 

These interactive billboards bring Victoria Secret's misogyny to a whole new level. Granted we all know that if you click on the bar code, the pictures of the model sent to your phone won't actually be naked [although it won't be long before the violent pornographers join in with this] but the idea itself is just horrific. It further reduces women's bodies into parts for titillation. Its the 21st century version of the peep show on a bus stop for small children. That way we indoctrinate boys into believing women are nothing but fucktoys and teach girls they have no value except as fucktoys. 

The fact that women's bodies are a game, a puzzle to be solved in the view of children demonstrates just how little value we have. 

The fact that these ads, which are pornographic, are in the view of children and children are invited to play the game shows how little respect we have for our children. Instead of allowing them to grow up and discover their sexuality safely, we have constructed and constrained sexuality. We have narrowed it to women as object; men as subject.

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Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: Sheba. You Know, The Cat Food.

First of all, Eva Longoria should NOT be dancing in a cat food commercial. She's a talented actress and this is a pile of misogynistic pooh. But, seriously, who thought this up? She's basically doing a strip tease for her cat. I mean, I love my cat but I don't strip for her as a pre-dinner show. She's a cat. She just wants to eat. At no point, did she sign up for a lap dance. But, hey, if we can't objectify women's bodies during a cat food commercial, when can we? 

Welcome to the Patriarchy: where even cats deserve the right to objectify and dehumanise the bodies of women. 

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Misogynistic Walk of Shame: Hooters. And, Not Just for the Name.

This is the bit where I admit to reading Jezebel; a magazine which claims to be feminist whilst writing some of the most misogynistic, anti-woman twaddle I've had the misfortune to read. If you don't believe me, look at their posts on breastfeeding or any post on celebrities. In between the gobsmackingly sexist posts about women, Jezebel manages to produce some utterly brilliant rants about body image, patriarchal fuckability, and stupid arsewipe advertisers. So, I have to give them props for their rant on this piece of misogynistic arsehattery: 

The entire ad is about how fat, ugly and utterly unfuckable most women are; cause that isn't offensive or misogynistic at all. Apparently, the only subhumans with vaginas who are even remotely fuckable are "girls". I do wish people would actually read Nabokov's Lolita and realise it's about the rape of a child and not some guide to fucking barely legal 18 year olds. [I'm also fairly creeped out by 40 year old men wanting to fuck 18 year olds. Just gross. Really, really gross].

Hooters remains the quintessential example of the normalisation of the objectification and pornographication of women's bodies. FFS, Hooters is classed as a "family restaurant" and not  a sex entertainment venue. You can have your child's birthday there. Granted, you have to be a pretty piss-poor parent with some serious common sense problems to think that a venue featuring half-naked women being objectified is a good place to go for chicken wings. But, lots of parents do this and, in doing so, help perpetuate rape culture. So, I'm going to be loud and proud about my judgy pants here: If you take your kid to Hooters, you really do need some basic critical thinking skills and parenting classes to boot.

I can't possibly improve on this rant in Jezebel: 

This commercial is just a stank bundle of cheap, hacky, antique jokes that prop up the patently damaging notion that women's societal value declines drastically with every cellulite dimple. Oh, thanks, guys. Thanks a lot. Now that I'm too embarrassed to go to the pool and exercise because some dickhead lifeguard and the voices in his head are going to be horking over my body, I guess I'll just cloak my shame in sweatpants and gorge on fried chicken all night! 

So, what they said and I'm adding Hooters to my Misogynistic Walk of Shame Boycott. [Not that I have ever eaten there. Obviously.]

Oh, and in case you are clinically stupid and wanted to pretend that that was a one-off example of extreme misogyny by Hooters, here's another ad charmingly entitled More than a Mouthful.

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The Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: The Continuing Nincompoopery of Lynx

Now, I'm sure everyone will be as shocked as I am at Lynx having misogynistic advertising. After all, Lynx are the creative geniuses behind this: 

And then there is this gem which isn't about the objectification of women at all: 

Lynx are clearly on the forefront of the anti-misogyny advertising front. So, I was shocked, horrified and utterly perplexed by this new ad campaign: The Five Types of Women: 

Because that's all women are: objectified stereotypes whose sole purpose is to be fucktoys for men. Or, in the case of purchasers of Lynx, teenage boys and "adults" with serious psycho-sexual disorders. After all, these are the kinds of comments Lynx allows on its FB page:

Louis Small She is not a brainy girl... she is a whore with glasses... 

ris Avfc Harrison High maintenance biyatches can suck my fat one. They horrible n fake

These ads just feed our hyper-masculine, hyper-sexualised rape culture wherein women are shamed for being sluts whilst being coerced into trying to fit the requirements of the Patriarchal Fuckability Test. Lynx is just another way for the Fashion-Beauty Complex to punish women whilst capitalising on male insecurities about their sexuality. Lynx isn't selling pleasure. Its just reinforcing patriarchal conformity and rape culture by constructing and constraining sexuality. I'm not sure who Lynx thinks is their customer base but I do think that the rule: "if the man wears lynx, he's not worth dating" is a maxim to live by.

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Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: It's PETA. Again.

Look, it's PETA being misogynistic. Again. Anyone else shocked by this? No? 

I'm an animal rights supporter. I don't buy from companies which test products on animals. I genuinely don't understand people who buy mascara which is tested on rabbits and I support the proposed EU ban on testing cosmetics on animals. However, I don't understand why PETA insists on perpetuating rape culture in order to save rabbits. Are they that stupid that they can't tell the difference? I think the celebrities who endorse PETA are hypocrites; yeah Naomi Campbell, I'm still looking at you.

There is NO reason why PETA has to advertise its campaigns by objectifying women. They perpetuate rape culture because they choose to. That is fundamentally the problem of PETA. They just aren't intelligent enough to critique capitalist practises without supporting patriarchal conformity.

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Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: @BittyLabs "Reclaim Your Wife" Awfulness

It's a company that sells baby bottles by telling men that women's breast belong to men. Because, God forbid, a woman use her breasts to feed her child. You know, like every other freaking mammal does. Nope, even in the first few precious months [or years!] women are expected to remain nothing more than fucktoys for their husbands. It's the one time in your life that you should feel proud and beautiful about your body which gestated a child for 40 odd weeks and then birthed that baby. No women should be made to feel worthless for not passing the Patriarchal Fuckability Test but targeting a new mother is just pathetic.

Alright, it was "just" a twitter campaign, but, come on, who actually thinks this shit is appropriate? Who thinks men are this stupid? And, if you do happen to run into a man who thinks this is funny, you probably shouldn't be reproducing with him. Jealous, infantile arsewipes do not make good men. Nor do they make good fathers. I can pretty much guarantee you any man that finds this funny will be out the door within a few years, won't pay any maintenance but will feel the need to ruin your child's life by pissing about with access visits.

These are the actual tweets Bitty Labs sent out:





Just in case you've missed the obvious "women are nothing more than fucktoys" reference in the first tweet, they conveniently sent out a second one to appeal to that subsection of extremely stupid arsewipes. This is such an epic social media failure that I genuinely can't get up the energy to email them to complain. Anyone who can tweet this wouldn't be bright enough to understand my critique of the capitalist-patriarchal anti-woman bullshit they are propogating.

So,they've made a half-hearted attempt at an apology but, let's face it, this is still a piece of misogynistic twaddle:

Ladies, We’re really sorry about the twitter campaign run last week. It was a huge miss understood [sic] and resulted in offensive messages. It was taken down yesterday. The messages had nothing to do with putting a husband needs before the baby’s needs, it was more about having a little extra time for the rest of the family. Obviously the whole campaign was poorly executed. We apologize deeply for this miss understanding and assure you, from now on the campaigns will be closely monitored before they go out. Thank you for a second chance.

Really, if you aren't going to bother apologising properly, there's really no point in bothering. It just makes you look like an even bigger nincompoop.

Oh, and not to put to fine a point on it, but the name Bitty Lab itself is pretty much the definition of misogynistic nastiness.

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Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: The Continuing Nincompoopery of PETA [TRIGGER WARNING]

I've always thought that PETA were a bunch of misogynistic nincompoops too stupid to understand that a person can care about the abuse and torture of animals without objectifying and torturing the bodies of women. This image of Pamela Anderson exemplifies everything that is wrong with them; and it's not even the most misogynistic image they've ever come up with:

Every time I see a new PETA advertisement, I think they can't possibly be anymore misogynistic or hypocritical (see Naomi Campbell and the "I'd rather be Naked than Wear Fur campaign). I am consistently wrong. PETA gave up all pretence of humanity when they decided to launch a porn channel in order to raise awareness of animal rights. Because torturing rabbits to test eye make up is more important than the rape and torture of women's bodies. Here's a hint: no one should be testing mascara on rabbits. It's torture. Double anal penetration of a woman's body: also torture. PETA are the quintessential misogynistic hypocrites with no redeeming features.

Yet, again, I was wrong in the PETA can't get any worse stakes. I came across the link to PETA' Superbowl misogynistic bollocks on a Mumsnet thread. I genuinely can't articulate just how offensive, vile and stupid the [thankfully banned] ad was. Simulating sex with vegetables in order to make vegetarianism look cool is really just pathetic and sad. And horrible and misogynistic. What kind of person converts to vegetarianism after seeing a woman faking an orgasm on a piece of broccoli? Is the animal rights movement so devoid of intelligent members that they have to trawl for support from the clinically stupid? Or, do PETA just not care that their ads are targeted at the sexually inadequate or hypocrites like Naomi Campbell?

I do not buy any beauty products which are tested on animals, including soaps and shampoos. I believe ALL animal testing should be illegal and people who wear fur as a fashion choice are dingbats [although, I do exclude here communities like the Inuit who eat, use, and wear all products from animals they hunt]. I do not believe in any factory-farming or battery caged hens and I do believe that the European/ North American & South American diets are far too dependent on meat which is part of the cause of famines in other areas of the world. I believe everyone reducing their meat intake to no more than once a week while have the benefit of increasing sustainable food production for all. I believe in this despite PETA's best efforts to the contrary.

I believe PETA's advertising campaigns buy into the hyper-sexualised and hyper-masculinity culture in which women are treated as no more than Patriarchal fucktoys. PETA support, perpetuate and perpetrate rape culture.

I do wonder how many people PETA put off the animal rights movement with their misogyny? And, how many have joined their cause because it reinforces the construction of women as sub-human?

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Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: Domino's Pizza Now Served with a Rape Joke

Rape jokes are never funny; unless you're a rapist. Rape jokes simply continue to perpetuate our rape culture. It doesn't matter if you aren't a rapist. If you laugh at a rape joke, you are telling a rapist that rape is okay. That rape is funny and totally normal. Like pornography, and to seriously badly paraphrase a famous feminist quote, laughing at rape jokes is the theory and rape is the practise. This blog is precisely why rape jokes are harmful and the comedians who make them are just stupid, vile misogynists.

So, I'm adding Dominoes to the Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame for their "No is the New Yes" campaign for their new range of "artisan pizzas" [which in and of itself is a pretty stupid campaign for multi-national fast food company]. Using a very well-known anti-rape campaign to sell pizzas is just fucking despicable. Dominoes and the advertising company they hired should be ashamed of themselves. They can not undo the harm they have caused by approving this campaign and I, for one, will be boycotting them. Permanently.

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Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: Aquafresh's Stupid Fecking Nurdle World

I took Small [aka my youngest child] to see Stockholm Syndrome: The Movie [aka Disney's Beauty and the Beast] the other day. It was pissing with rain. We have run out of soft plays, swimming pools and museums to visit with the several thousand other families struggling to entertain small children during school holidays when it hasn't stopped raining. In what feels like forever. So, I'm making excuses for taking her to see a Disney Princess film. She likes them and it gives me a chance to rant about them. I think my objections to Beauty and the Beast are the routine feminist critiques: violent, abusive man who "heals" through the loving, kindness of a beautiful, sweet woman. Even better, Belle can read. And, she turns down a proposal from the village violent abuser to marry the rich abusive prince. Cus, that's a good thing right, especially if you ignore the subtext of rape throughout most of the first half of the movie? #facepalm

As if it weren't bad enough sitting through the twaddle of Beauty and the Beast, I also had to sit through Aquafresh's oh so subtle attempts at marketing toothpaste to children via the pretence of being educational. It's a short "film" called Nurdle World. It was patronising and the actress hosting it was, frankly, appalling. Really, the whole thing was appalling. But, they surpassed the appalling shit with their reinforcing of some seriously stupid, offensive and damaging stereotypes. Turns out, girls talk too much and boys are cool because they solve problems and fly spaceships. But girls, they just talk too much and do nothing. Just like Disney Princesses who have to be rescued constantly from "real men", Nurdle World girls [and sisters in real life] just sit around yakking and missing out on all the fun.

Just how fucking stupid was the marketing team that came up with this patronising shit? We are so boycotting Aquafresh now.

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