yuck. I'm also tired of seeing two girls posing together, which tries to send off a lesbo-erotic feeling to turn on guys.

what a stupid campaign!!

It's interesting, in a troubling way, that they chose a jacket, hairstyle, and camera angle that make the two look like well to do women from the 1800s in the third image.

NOOOOOO

As a descendant of African-American slaves in Mississippi, I do not appreciate this. My mother, the daughter of a sharecropper [later landowner] picked cotton w/ her parents to keep food on the table.

I react very strongly to this.

Not to mention the fact that most cotton today is harvested by children [who should be in school] in Uzbekistan. [Uzbekistan is the 2nd largest exporter of cotton. The exploitation of child labor cannot be glossed over with these semi-idyllic/semi-erotic images.

http://humantrafficking.change.org/blog/view/uzbek_cotton_the_fabric_of_slavery

Zooey Deschanel's cotton commercials bug me because they romanticize cotton as a "natural" and carefree fabric when it's so hard on the environment/people and she's one of the faces of the current manifestation of hipsterism and neo-folk or whatever, so it seems like a bit of greenwashing to me. At least there aren't any "See, even slavery can be glamorous" undertones in her ads.

The ones here are gross and weird, IMO.

I wonder if the models had any thoughts about this campaign. If they're not American, they may not be aware of the history. Of course, models are asked to pose in rediculous, stupid, and offensive campaigns all the time.

As one who grew up in an economy dependent on cotton, I have no qualms with the campaign. Call me blind, but I see the idea of the campaign as showing that cotton is more than just the basic shirts one buys at the store. Instead, it does have a place in high fashion (where usually leather, silk, and other "finer" fabrics are desired).

While cotton is no longer commonly picked by hand in the United States Southeast today, I do not see it as overly fake to depict some models picking around in it (it is like getting mad because some orange juice add shows someone squeezing your juice by hand).

I also wish to mention that the majority of Southerners did not have slaves in the 19th century. Thus, I feel that associating the act of picking cotton with slavery is a means of overgeneralizing.

Cotton: The Fabric of Your Strife.

Mike, for a significant period of time cotton picked by slaves was a vast majority of the cotton on the market, and accounted for 50% of the value of all US exports.

For reference: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/modules/slavery/index.cfm

The popularity of cotton along with the technological advancement of the cotton gin to make it easier and more profitable to produce increased dependence on slavery in the US and hence, most likely lengthened the period during which slavery was legal and accepted in the US.

For reference: http://www.essortment.com/all/cottongin_rciv.htm

Cotton and slavery are inextricably connected and that is absolutely not an overgeneralization.

Personally I'm aghast at the blithe way they show women of different races in poses suggesting equality (ie they're posed the same way), in a cotton field - one of the biggest symbols of racial oppression there is in the South.

When I was little my folks stopped by a cotton field on the side of the road during a family trip. My mom had us pick a few puffs of cotton just to get a feel for how punishing the labor was.

For me (a white woman brought up in the South), this juxtaposition was almost painful it was so stark. Are they being "ironic"??

I agree with Anonnymouse. What must have been going through those models' minds?

Um, yes. I worked for the USDA for a while, and thank goodness I didn't have to work with the cotton, but it was right next to our soybean fields. And cotton-in-the-boll is not soft or sensual or any of that, it's painful!

Also, the period dress IS quite distasteful. And the whole "let's throw in a white woman to try and make this offensive ad not offensive" thing.

It was not only black slaves who picked cotton in Mississippi. My white grandmother, Ida Belle Williams (of Pike County, Mississipp), who lived from 1920 to 1995, grew up picking cotton alongside about a dozen siblings. As a child, she had no shoes. She had to quit school after sixth grade because textbooks were not free, so the family only sent their sons to school past sixth grade. She was in an abusive marriage all of her adult life, leaving her quiet and unlikely to ever toot her own horn. The only time I ever did hear her toot her own horn, however, was when she would say how when she was "coming up, I did all the hard work the boys did. I even picked cotton; all of us girls did."

I find the ads offensive. I just do. When I see them I think of my grandmother shoeless, watching the boys leave for school while she stays in the fields picking cotton. I think of the chunk of her nostril and piece of her eyelid that the doctor cut away when she was an old woman, saving her life from the skin cancer that resulted from a childhood spent picking cotton under the merciless Mississippi sun. She was born a fair-skinned redhead, but her hair turned pure white at a very young age, and the skin on each of her arms was a huge blend of big splotches.

I understand the ads are especially offensive because of slavery. And I agree, but since I am white, I won't speak for descendants of slaves. Instead, I will just speak of my white grandmother - and I can tell you that a white girl from the cotton fields doesn't look anything like this garbage. I find it hurtful and offensive.

In my humble opinion, the comparison between these ads and the ads showing people squeezing your orange juice in a citrus grove does not work. Cotton has a legacy in this country: poverty, oppression, slavery, sharecropping, backbreaking labor. There is no such cultural memory attached to the orange grove example. They are not the same.

I'm taking a class about the representation of black people in American film, and one of the most popular portrayals of field slaves in the first half of the 20th century was showing them happily picking cotton. Of course, this was incredibly racist, since it undermined the grueling labor slaves had to do, thereby undermining the horrors of slavery. Thus, I can't look at this without seeing the racial subtext—cotton-picking is largely tied to slavery, and portraying it as easy labor makes light of the work that slaves were forced to do. Obviously, making light of slavery isn't a good thing.

I found it pretty interesting that the advertisers dared put a woman of color in this ad. Perhaps two white women would be more problematic (for reasons other than equal race representation), as it would erase black people's labor entirely? I'm not sure.

Still, I have to say that this goes as one of the least creative advertising schemes ever. Isn't "throw some hot chicks in there" getting kind of old? Why are companies still paying for someone to come up with that?

Yes, cotton was labor-intensive. BUT that crop put food on the table at our house for our big family for years. Without that cash, we would have starved, or moved to the St. Louis suburbs. I'll take the trashy cotton fields any day.

At first I was going to say something like, "Oh, its not a big deal to me. Its just the typical modeling shoot trying to do something different." As I kept reading the post and saw that this is a national campaign by Cotton USA, I was pretty disgusted as an African-American woman whose family stopped picking cotton not that long ago in the deep South. My family is from Alabama and Mississippi and I am surprised that Cotton USA did not think about the history of cotton-picking in this country before approving this ad (or maybe they did and didn't care). Very interesting.

In the original post the statement is that in the UK it was found that because cotton is pesticide and herbicide intensive the ads were banned. Actually if you follow the link they said "The authority decided that since it believed “there was no universally agreed definition of the term ‘sustainable’ and there appeared to be a significant division of informed opinion as to whether cotton production in the US could be described as ‘sustainable’ or not under various available definitions, the term ‘sustainable’ in the CCI ad was likely to be ambiguous and unclear to consumers.”" So it wasn't an active declaration that cotton is not sustainable, it was a ruling only that the advertiser couldn't prove or reasonably support claiming it is sustainable, partly because of a lack of a universal definition. (I hold the common opinion, incidentally, that cotton is not innocuous, that it's a very water-intensive and chemical-intensive crop, though I admit it's not based on a lot of research and I now feel I need to inform myself a bit better)

There's a lot of discussion about black, white and other models who were or might have been or should have been used in the ad. Would the best way to frame the question be, as some here have asked, what *would* be acceptable in selecting models for a cotton ad? Someone, even in this small sample here, disagreed with any single or combined race or skin color. So is the solution that the cotton industry daren't have any models at all?

Perhaps some would argue it's not the models, it's that they're in a field of cotton, which links then directly to the shameful history of cotton production in the American South at specific historical periods. Does it follow then that the cotton industry must avoid showing cotton fields in a positive light, does that solve a problem?

I suspect what was in the ad developers' minds was trying to position cotton as something that grows (and is, in that sense, natural). I can't see how it's possible to blame them for that effort. It's one of cotton's differentiators. The industry that produces bamboo fibre, the industry that produces wool, they position their product as natural materials. (And neither, should one look into the production of these, is without its share of flaws...) Besides, cotton bolls look so fluffy and hence soft and comfy - it's a natural thing to consider this is a product characteristic you'd try to promote. Is cotton nasty to pick because of the sharp edges of the plant? Yes, but does the cotton industry have to avoid using images of soft cotton bolls because that doesn't represent every characteristic of the plant? Apply that standard to all the other products advertised and advertising would be a very tough game indeed.

As to Uzbekistan, wow, that's an eye-opener for me and thanks for providing the info. It's still not something that IMO argues against these ads, any more than any industry with shameful practices somewhere should be prevented from positively advertising their product. Why hold cotton to a particularly higher standard? Shoe manufacturing. Clothing manufacturing. Carpets. Lots of stuff manufactured in China, in the 3rd world. Terrible working conditions and low wages are abusive and awful, and we should shed light on them and work to change and improve them. So why this outpouring of rage against the American cotton industry in particular? If they were forced to advertise differently - "Cotton is environmentally unfriendly, it has a shameful history in America, and is difficult and uncomfortable to pick by hand. Still, not a bad material overall: buy cotton" - what would that accomplish in terms of improving the world? I think we need to be more even-handed, and focus outrage on the areas where people could gain the most from change.

Neighbors here still work in the woods, logging, in difficult and hazardous circumstances. Are they not slaves as well, forced by economic circumstances into these abysmal conditions and sub-subsistence wages? Does that give me the right to rail against the home building industry, or the railroad industry because of their demand for wood materials?

And what of the garment industry, which for over a century has forced mostly women into virtual slavery? Should we not protest, and not purchase clothing?

Where and when does the slavery issue stop, and under what circumstances? Somewhere we must decide that, whatever the previous conditions, we will change our direction, and move on.

May I be as bold to suggest that as well as looking to the past, we should look to the future too? Hemp needs less water, less chemicals and makes generally better material. Cotton has had it's time.

the term, as in "get your cotton picking hands off me" was an invective against field slaves or people who were compared to such status. your "reclaiming" the term is way off.

Where is the research showing such an interpretation?

ok, slaves and the itinerant workers, sharecroppers, and such - i grew up in the south, and cotton picking referred to such "lower castes" - and i don't have any research whatsoever. but here's a quick link for what it's worth - http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/cotton-picking.html alluding to "the horny, calloused (and, of course, black) hands that picked cotton."

Some of thèse comments are so ahistorical it is frightening. The article is likewise I'll informed. All sorts of people picked cotton and my step father, a Texan of european picked cotton his entire childhood in conditions that would be considered slavery today.

While I am a civil rights activist ans scholar, I am constantly reminded of such anachronistic arguments coming out of our country. This saddens me. This advertisement is not in the least racist. What is racist is constructing an implausible argument of racism based on a fiction that only slaves picked cotton. This is simply a convenient narrative and demonstrstes the sad lack of history amongst my fellow Americans.

I am as white as snow. Both of my parents had to work in the fields as children in Deep South Mississippi. They both grew up pathetically poor, and they both had to pick cotton as children. And so did all their neighbors and relatives. All white, all poor, and all worked just as hard as any black person around. Read and learn.

If this ad offends you don’t go to Kenya. There’s a pic of people picking cotton on the back of their money. 200 shillings to be exact.

Although many were White, poor and picking cotton, this is true. But at the end of the day they were still White and could freely go anywhere, and had a " voice." The poor Whites didn't worry about being killed or hung. I never saw a photo of the entire towns people, kids included, watching the hanging of a White man whether he was poor or not. So, no matter how poor or White they were, picking cotton, they still had more rights than blacks.