Chloe L. sent along an analysis of a post-Thanksgiving advertisement she received in the mail:
The ad, Chloe points out, manages to cover quite a bit of ground. The tag line at the very top (“Keep feeding yourself with shoes, not food!”) tells women to forgo eating in favor of figurative consumption. This resonates with the cultural expectation that women’s primary purpose is to be, as Chloe puts it, “aesthetically pleasing for others.” She is also presented as a sexualized object. Chloe again:
Though we cannot see more than legs, we know that it is a woman by her feminine high-heeled booties and shaved legs… [she] is presumably naked with her bra hanging on the door knob.
The image, then, harmonizes nicely with the copy; both suggest that women should make strong efforts to shape and display their bodies in ways that conform to cultural expectations.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 11
marc sobel — December 11, 2010
the image does not appear
Jan Andrea — December 11, 2010
You can't link to images in your email account -- they have to be uploaded to the blog server :)
Lindsay — December 11, 2010
It also makes me think of people getting run over and trampled at Black Friday "Doorbuster" sales. Considering the prevalence of injuries and deaths from Black Friday shopping, it's surprising they didn't think of that also. Or maybe they did and disregarded it.
Anonymous — December 12, 2010
This is one of the worst ads I've seen in a long time. I mean, first off, everything in the ad has a reflection (the door, the walls) *except* her, so what is she, a vampire? Really it just makes it more apparent that the image is lazily tacked together. I mean, if she had a body attached to those legs at that angle it would go through the door. But obviously she doesn't, since you can see the light passing through the crack between the door and the frame, completely uninterrupted. This is literally just disembodied legs. Also, I get that it is supposed to be the shoes (and the legs) busting through the door, but then why the bra? Like, naked legs all the way up to the beginning of the ass isn't sexy enough? We need to imply that she's totally naked, even though she doesn't exist, and the ad has nothing to do with sex, or bras? And if she is having some sort of sexytime, then obviously she's not going to this doorbuster. And all of this has absolutely nothing to do with eating shoes. Ugh this is so stupid.
Dave — December 13, 2010
The first thing I thought of when I saw the bra on the door knob is that that's the sort of thing that would happen in a male dorm to indicate that the inhabitants of the room are 'otherwise engaged'. Presumably that's the surprise then if you were to enter the room.
katerina — December 13, 2010
That's a weird ad. Is it for shopping online? It's to go along with holiday shopping, but who buys someone shoes for Christmas? It's to spend money on yourself. Maybe you are shopping online, and that makes it ok to be naked. ??? Instead of pigging out on leftovers and pie, buy shoes. ??? I can't figure out why they are using a drawing of a bra. It's just weird there's a bra on the door, is she having sex or is she shopping, but why is it a crude drawing of a bra? I understand a lot about this ad - buy shoes instead of eat a lot, you love shoes, you're a woman (blech), but then it starts to get surreal, wearing nothing but shoes and lying on your back is not a good position to buy shoes. She obviously has shoes, and took off her drawn bra?, what she needs maybe is to buy some pants or a chair. Anonymous right above makes some other good observations about this image, I think her upper body goes straight through the floor, where her butt should be is almost visible right up to the edge of the door in a way she can't just be bent at the waist (which seems implied) and the existence of her upper body is impossible unless she is buried under the floor. I don't know, it doesn't seem like a good way to buy shoes. Also as pointed out, the legs are not reflected in the shiny floor, but also, her legs are enormously out of scale with the door, and by implication, so are her boobs. Now I know why they drew the bra instead of a real bra (if this was an important motif for them) - the cups are huge, but the band is too short to go around unless she's literally a stick.
So many confusions looking at this ad. It's just a bad ad.
Bagelsan — December 13, 2010
So far we've decided that poor people don't need food, women don't need food... guess we're gonna solve world hunger just by all agreeing not to need food anymore!