Feature
- Do You Hate Your Partner, Too?
- California Teen Avoids Heavy Sentencing by Passing the Buck
- Wanna Buy Your Teenager a Padded Push-Up Bra?
- Vampires in Texas!
- These Guys Are As Bad As Westboro Baptist Church
- Funny Letters Sent to Women's Magazines
- Women's Ski Jumping: Still Not a 'Real' Sport
- Will the World Be Pro-Choice Soon?
- Are We Getting Too Lazy to Even Divorce?
- Forever 21's Maternity Line: Glamorizing Teen Pregnancy?
Outcries of sexism in advertising is not a new thing. In fact, companies from McDonald’s to Hardee’s have taken heat for playing to very specific target audiences. Perhaps the most egregious offender in terms of sexist ads, however, is the beer industry.
And now it’s going international.
The poster campaign features three bare-naked woman covering their cleavage with beer mugs – with the brews’ colours fitting the colour of their hair.
Caroline Kröpfl, a spokeswoman for the Hirter Bier brewery based in the Carinthian town of Micheldorf, claimed: “The poster shows three self-confident beer drinkers.”
Yes, I bet they were confident. I don’t know, maybe it’s me, but I’ve certainly never hung around naked drinking beer with a bunch of girlfriends. Well, not that I remember, anyway (I have a tattoo I don’t remember getting, either, though).
At any rate, that visual image wouldn’t shout out “confident” to me. It would instead scream “DRUNK”. Although maybe that’s the point, and “self-confident beer drinkers” is just more PC than referring to them as a bunch of …
Geez.
But feminist politicians of different parties are fuming over the controversial marketing stunt. Several protest activities have already been launched on social network platforms on the internet, while Vienna Social Democrat (SPÖ) Sandra Frauenberger set up a protest letter form on the party’s website.
Kröpfl, who revealed the firm website has broken down several times since the poster campaign was kicked off a few weeks ago, meanwhile revealed plans to advertise new products with naked men’s buttocks in autumn.
Ha! That’s quite a response, if you think about it. Are there shades of “Kiss my company’s ass?” in there. I’m thinking yes.
It does lead in kind of an interesting direction, though. There tends to be backlash when women are perceived as being objectified in advertising, yet there’s an argument that men are objectified in similar ways.
I mean, even before the proposed upcoming ass parade from Hirter Bier, how many ads have you seen with bare-chested, sculpted, golden men? I can think of a dozen right off the top of my head, and yes, many of them do in fact involve beer.
Of course, one of the strongest visual images I have is of the infamous Calvin Klein underwear campaign. I had a whole collage of Marky Mark baring his Calvins on my bedroom wall when I was a teenager. They were at least as risqué as the swimsuit models plastered all over my older brother’s walls.
I’m not going to argue against the double standard that unquestionably exists. Women have been subjected to nudity in films, for example, far longer than men. Full frontal male nudity is still fairly uncommon. In fact, the first on-screen penis I saw in a real film was Schindler’s List, and there was certainly nothing sexual about it.
Okay, I’ve gotten rather far afield of my basic point, which is basically that it’s odd the way there’s such a strong feminist outcry when women are objectified in advertising, films, television, and even the news industry (anchorladies are really catching on, and have you ever seen Fox News?) yet shirtless men are pretty standard fare. Are boobs really that important?
You Might Also Like ...
-
-
7
From a straight girls point of view: I would rather see boobs on the screen than a penis. A penis on film or in a photograph just looks sad to me, like a small, unhappy dog that’s lost it’s basket. And it is never as good as I imagined the bronzed god on the screen to have. At least with boobs I am never disappointed, and not really bothered.
Also, to do with the ‘offensive’ advert: it’s beer. Beer + boobs = more sales of beer. Seems like a clever campaign to me – at least they’re colour co-ordinated.
i am from vienna and as most of the people here, i find it very surprising that politicians of the spö are starting to criticize ads. its just plain silly.
don’t get me wrong, i have always been impressed by their work as politicians who support women. e.g.help for teenage moms etc.
but criticizing a beer ad is so unusual, because austrians never really cared about nudity in general. people are half naked in public swimming areas and they have a tendency to nudism. it is as unneccessary as wanting to change the national anthem.
Katie,I can’t believe you aren’t turned on by old naked jewish guys!
Half-naked (or fully naked) women in ads annoy me about as much as half naked men do. Unless you’re selling lingerie, partial nudity is not relevant to the product you’re selling. I’m certainly not a prude, but it’s always been something that bugged me.
However, as long as we’re talking about gratuitous nudity in films…
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen full-frontal nudity of women in movies. I’ve never seen a naked man in a movie that wasn’t X-rated.
I feel like there is dick in a whole lot of movies now. Movies that aren’t porn! And hell, there is dick ALL over TV. True Blood anyone?
Ah, I’ve never seen True Blood. This is probably why I haven’t seen dicks everywhere on tv!
[...] yeah, it comes as no surprise to me that Axe’s newest ad campaign for, of [...]