Masculinists fight back over sexploitation Richard Ralphsmith
MEN around the country are up in arms this week over an advertising campaign that many see as sexist.
It’s the Voodoo hosiery billboard that’s causing the stir. It shows a dominant woman with two naked men on their hands and knees in front of her. The woman is holding a leash attached to their necks, walking them like dogs.
Enraged masculinists are furious about the ad. Radio talk show lines have been running hot with indignant males, incensed at being depicted as women’s sexual playthings.
The spokesbloke for the Council for the PositivePortrayal of Men in Advertising is demanding the adsbe withdrawn.
Hmm? What’s that? Men aren’t up in arms? There is no such thing as the Council for the Positive Portayal of Men in Advertising?
That is strange.
For years men endured the likes of Marky Mark flashing his sixpack and lunchbox in those Calvin Klein undie ads, without uttering a word about this blatant sexual exploitation.
Then there was the Diet Coke TV ad where a bunch of female office workers timed their coffee break so that they could ogle at a shirtless, sweaty road worker, entirely unaware that he’s being treated like a hunk of man-meat.
And still, not a peep.
When the ads aren’t sexually objectifying men, they’re portraying us as oafish churls, unable to master the simplest of household duties. A recent ad for a cleaning product claimed to be “So simple, even a man can use it”.
Picture the reaction if the roles were reversed in the Voodoo ad. Women are portrayed as dogs! Man as their master!
But for some reason, blokes don’t complain. Why not? We are, after all, a minority group (okay, 49%, but a minority just the same). Where are the outraged male lobbyists vigorously defending our rights?
There is a male counterpart for misogyny: misandry. Ever heard of it?
Probably not. My spell check is even putting a wiggly red line underneath it, telling me it isn’t even a word.
(Mind you, it’s putting a wiggly red line underneath “wiggly” too. It’s suggesting I type “wigwag” instead. So much for spell checks.)
Men don’t seem to get upset when someone has a bit of fun at our expense. Perhaps those nasty marketers are putting something in our beer.
It’s the double standard that gets me. If an ad makes the slightest slight against women, lobbyists are riotous.
Show an ad for Wonderbra picturing—wait for it—a girl in a bra—and the cries of indignation are shriller than a budgie with a wedgie.
The funny thing is, these ads are aimed at—and often marketed by—women.
Advertisers know what their audience wants.
Showing women wielding power—sexual and otherwise—over men has become a new advertising paradigm.
It’s a great way to get chicks to buy stuff. That’s why the sales figures of Wonderbra are so wunderbar. If men come off as the victims from the exchange, so much the better.
Sex is a weapon, and it’s bloody sharp.
So what’s to be done? Well, forgive me for paraphrasing Pat Benatar, but if love is a battlefield, let’s take no prisoners.
Bring on the boobs, the lips, the tight blokes’ bums and the hairy chests.
Give free reign to sexy ads. Just make sure there’s some wit and originality involved; I find gratuity and banality much more offensive than sex.
We’ll go tit (pardon the French) for tat, and put up a giant scoreboard next to the Coke sign at Kings Cross. Maybe Wendy and Moony can keep score on “Battle of the Sexes” show.
The ads will be withdrawn when nobody buys, not when someone complains.
As long as both genders get equal time, it’s not sexism. It’s just sex, plain and simple.
Richard Ralphsmith is a freelance copywriter formerly of M&C Saatchi Sydney, London and New York. E: richieralphie@hotmail.com
