Jan
2016
Advertising: Turning Women into Objects: Current Event
Advertising: turning women into objects since the beginning of time.
A New Zealand men’s fashion brand, I Love Ugly, recently got put in hot water for its sexist advertisements.
These ads depicted a ring-clad man touching and covering a woman’s naked breast, genitals, and butt.
This was immediately set under fire for treating women as simply props and using unjustifiable highly sexual content to try and sell rings.
In response to the negative reactions regarding the extremely provocative campaigns, the company wrote on Facebook, “Jewelry is one of those things you either love or hate on a man. We tried our best to rework something that makes a lot of males a little uneasy and turn it into something the dubious could potentially see themselves wearing,”
Also, now the I Love Ugly company has began printing more ads to respond to the criticism. However, these show a woman’s hand over a man’s torso. Unsurprisingly this move was called out as yet another example of the company completely missing the point of sexist criticism, for it shows a part of a man’s body that is not sexualized in society.
Speaking of this ad, Daniel Barrett wrote,”… A further demonstration of how the brand has no understanding of the power imbalance ingrained in society,” on Facebook.
Hundreds of others echoed his response with calls of misogyny and stating, “You really don’t get it, do you?”
This was followed by another ignorant response, blindly saying in a tweet, “Mixed reviews about our latest ring campaign. Some love it, some hate it. If you’re nervous about something , you’re onto something good.”
Rebutted yet again by Frances Cook saying, “Hey @iloveugly, you’re not onto something good when you’re actively contributing to a system that treats women as second class citizens.”
If you are nervous about something, it’s must likely because you know it’s horribly offensive and you’re too arrogant to apologize. Not because you’re on to something good.
Though some may snort and carelessly shout, “The feminist are coming. The feminist are coming.”, that is not the case. Instead, this is a prime case of sexualizing both bodies and minds in hopes of selfish income by doing so.
This ad affects both me and the world because it depicts the dilapidating state of the sex-driven society we live in. If such a taboo, private subject such as sex is being exploited to sell jewelry, where is the world coming to? The line between prostitution and sells-man ship is not only blurred, but now completely erased. Also, with me, being a female, it shows a great deal of disrespect to every woman alive by treating her as if she was a backdrop or lamp or wall. Therefore, I agree with this writer because they agrees that the sexism shown here is crossing the line– by A LOT.