I wouldn't say it's just objectification of women. The one with the grapefruit I understood to be phallic.

Also I'm never going to look at fruit the same way again :(

Ugh, really guys? Pick your battles. This is not the right battle.

"Does this make my butt look big" is a phrase that's sort of ingrained in our consciousness to mean "I care about my personal appearance and how I appear in certain clothing. I am asking this question to make sure I don't overstep the standards of attractiveness that I have set for myself."

That's it. People care how they look clothing, whether it's "Does this make my butt look big?" or "Is this tshirt too small?" or "Are these pants too baggy?" or "do these glasses look good on me?"

The story would be different if the caption were "THIS PEAR CLEARLY HAS A LARGE BUTTOCKS, AND SHOULD THEREFORE BE SHUNNED BY MAINSTREAM SOCIETY AS IT DOESN'T FIT IN WITH OUR STANDARDS OF BEAUTY."

But it's not - it's harmless. It pokes fun at our own vanity, and that's all.

With the line "does this skin make my butt look big" are they implying that the skin/rind of a fruit is fatty and the fruit is better for you if it is peeled and stored in sugar and preservative water? It just doesn't really make any sense.

What makes the pear female? I understand that it's a stereotype that only females care about appearance but I think as sociologists we should be able to step outside of that and recognize that a great deal of males also care about there appearance. For that matter, why does the pear have to have a sex at all? Maybe it's an intersex pear. Let's not just guess at the pear's sex. When it is ready for us to know, it will tell us.

Wait, objectification of whom? It's fruit made to look like people, not the other way around.

Also, I love sex and would like to see it associated with as many other pleasant activities as possible. Like eating fruit.

Being pear shaped myself, I get tired of this "Does this make my butt look big" meme. It looks big, period. It always will, no matter how thin I am. When it comes to being a woman, having anything big (other than breasts) is mostly not a good thing -- heck, even hands and feet are supposed to be small.

And why, if they had to go the "butt looks big" route...why not a banana and a couple of oranges (or an orange slice and two cherries), artfully arranged with some blither about package size? At least both sexes are skewered then.

I just hate that nudity is always sex. my butt does look a bit bigger in my pants. but when I take them off it is not to be placed into the male gaze.

The fruit is female because female bodies are what sell products. We are conditioned to see anything that is related to sex as female. Because women ARE sex.

but it seems as though naked means also vivisected. um... creepy?

To be honest, I personally didn't get a feeling of objectification from this campaign. Quite the opposite, to me it looks more like a satire of objectification.

Especially the last one ('Does this skin make my butt look big?'), I thought it was poking fun at women's insecurities instead of feeding them, as in 'look, does this pear's bum look any less appetizing because of its clothes? Obviously no. See how pointless this question is? Now have some fruit and relax'.

Once I got past the point of 'here we go again with the flippant sexualisation' and thought about it, this campaign squicked me out.

'Does this skin make my butt look big?'???? For serious? Yes, it does. You'd better peel YOUR SKIN off and then SLICE YOURSELF INTO neatly consumable pieces like the peach and grapefruit.

I think this probably almost fits in the 'woman as consumable objects' category, although of course it's really 'consumable objects as women' a la PETA. Yes, that's right. I just compared a 'harmless' fruit campaign to PETA. It's a difference of scale, not of type.

I think I see what the author is trying to say. The punch line, "Yeah, so sexual objectification and hatred of women’s bodies all in one! Just to sell fruit cocktail!" seems like a bit of a rant, to be honest, but that really is what is going on in the advertisement.

Sexual objectification:
The Full Monty - referencing a play/movie in which the male leads take off all of their clothes.
Fruit Gone Wild - referencing the Girls Gone Wild franchise in which women take off their shirts and bras.
Being "in the buff" and to "take it all off" are phrases used to refer to human nakedness (the latter being a bit more provocative).

Using a pear to ask the question, "does this make my butt look big?" not only references women's stereotypical insecurities about their bodies, but also refers to women as having stereotypically binary body types i.e., pear- or apple-shaped (which is almost always presented in conjunction with a discussion of body fat). This is an old, old question that we are used to hearing in the U. S. and specifically refers to women. Using a pear to stand in for a woman allows the viewer to objectify it without having to question why the size of its base is an issue in the first place. It is a pear - it's supposed to be bigger on the bottom. In mainstream culture, women are not acceptable if they are as out of proportion.

What makes this ad campaign cute and harmless is that it is centered on fruit. Specifically, fruit without the peel. Fruit is good. And harmless! The flip side, however, is the duality of the ad that not only reminds us of human nakedness (which is sexualized in our culture again and again), but perpetuates negative stereotypes of women's bodies.

To go a bit further, I might say most of the fruits that do not have peels, and are, therefore, naked, are not accompanied by a negative comment regarding their looks. The only fruit that is viewed in a negative fashion is the pear, which has its peel on. Prude!

I agree with the view of the ad as sexualizing fruit. The use of a concept of 'nakedness' with fruit rather than 'without a peel' defaults to bodies without clothes. Even the fruit is as shiny as the well-oiled models we usually see in advertising.

True fact: that pear looks like a scrote, and when I look at it, that's all I can see.

Nope. Don't get it at all. Is peeled and chopped fruit in a jar sexier than regular ol' fruit? I didn't know it was sexy at all.
(Or maybe my pear shape will disappear if I eat this fruit.)

I am asking this question to make sure I don’t overstep the standards of attractiveness that I have set for myself

The problem here is the "that I have set for myself" part.

It is the timy waist above the "big butt" which makes the pear female.

The skin of fruit is the healthiest part - why would you want to take it off of most fruit?

"Hatred of women's bodies" is far, far too strong. As enjoyable and illuminating as this blog often is, I think the discussion falls all too often into a mode wherein the objective is to whip up the greatest possible offense to language that is at worst mildly objectionable.

Is the contention here really that this advertisment was attempting to make us associate _hatred_ with the product they are trying to sell?

Carrie,

You have chosen to leave your inquiries as a reply to my original comment, so I consider myself within bounds to take them as directed at least in part at me.

I would like to point out that I did not at any point use the word "outrage," nor would I accuse the author of the post of exhibiting outrage. I said her characterization of the ad as displaying "hatred" for women's bodies was far too strong, and remarked on what I think to be a certain propensity for taking excessive offense from the texts that are herein presented. "Offense," not "outrage." I do not regard the terms as remotely exchangeable. Outrage is when we storm the Winter Palace. Offense is when I think you are accusing me of anti-feminism.

And, coming to the topic of feminism, I really could not speak as to whether my reading of this del Monte ad is informed by "stereotypes about angry, militant feminists." I hope I am as free of such bugbears as any foolish person striving for enlightenment in this broken world can be. What, exactly, I have said in my comment to make you wave such a brush around in front of me I can not say. But may I point out that you are dripping tar all over my carpets, and it is just the devil to get those stains out?

Yours,

Bosola 10:30 pm on March 26, 2010 | # | Reply

Surely criticism, per se, can not be out of bounds in this forum. –Unless I am mistaken, and this blog is not so much about the dialectical search for wisdom as it is about cheering for a kind of ideological conformity.

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And a very stupid, irresponsible conformity enforcement it is. You are lucky you have not yet been called a "hater" because you have expressed a viewpoint that is not the one enforced by the dominant majority idiocy. Having said that, given that commenters on this blog aren't just multiple cloned sock-puppets of one of these unfortunate others, you will see that every now and then, this stupid conformity gets a shake-up while several threads do develop some interesting debates or more complex analyses in fragmented bits and pieces coming from various people.

Carrie 9:58 pm on March 25, 2010 | # | Reply

Why does any sort of criticism or analysis always strike some people as an expression of outrage?
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Because people without solid foundations for their viewpoints constantly mis-characterize any pointed criticism that exposes flaws in their ideological frameworks. It's simply a way to divert attention and to silence ideas. It's the same mechanism of ad hominem attacks, except it's directed at the tone aspect of a text. It's for this reason that criticisms written in a normal tone get constantly mis-characterizing as "rants," "outrages," and "hate-speech" by people who can't counter-argue the criticisms in a rational format. Of course, people can rant, but usually it's the person who is reaching low to mis-characterize an opponent's arguments as "ranting" that is actually already going down the ranting path.

Having noted that, given how some individuals (and it's not only on this blog) always mis-characterize any criticism to their ideology as a rant, it makes you wonder if they are completely intellectually dishonest or if they have so many issues concerning the emotional functioning of their perceptions of reality that they can't distinguish a criticism from a rant. In other words, they have an impaired perception system.

Late to the game, I realize, but I felt compelled to comment because no one (except for the commenter who mentioned the pear looking like a scrotum and the commenter who said the grapefruit was phallic) seemed to see a mixed-sex representation in the ads. "The Full Monty" is UK slang meaning "the whole thing," but since the ad campaign is about naked fruit and the (peach?) has just shucked its skin, I'd be inclined to believe that the reference is meant to go back to the movie by the same title, in which the "full Monty" refers to male strippers taking it ALL off. And the "Unzip Me" pear, which I realize now that I'm commenting could refer to a woman inviting someone to unzip the back of her dress (I can see the back/buttocks imagery now), when I first saw that I thought of a zipper on a male fly. The pear made me think of a bulging trouser crotch, rather than female nudity.

My point is that I think Del Monte attempted to invoke male and female imagery. They definitely came out with more on the female side, though, which is unsurprising.