Wow. Maybe it's my own naivete, but I never would have seen that ad that way.

I didn't see it either. But then, the guys you know, like the out-of-frame ejaculator in this ad, may be unusually productive. As I said in my comment on the 2008 post, you can find similar images in earlier times, as in the 1950s Brylcreem ad (go here and push the slider to the 0:40 mark).

I have a hard time imagining how this ad could be interpreted otherwise.

Would someone explain why they think the ad campaign is designed to bring to mind ejaculation? Do you think it helps sell the product? It's a weird picture, but it doesn't have brought to mind ejaculation to me.

A friend and I were at the mall a couple months back and saw a huge poster of this ad in Sephora and immediately stopped to take a photo of it because we saw it this way (and wanted to show it to our friends to get confirmation that it wasn't just our own dirty minds). Part of it too, is that it's actually on her lips and teeth, somewhere no moisturizer should be. :-P

Im usually the type to see something perverted in everything, but this just makes me think of cake batter and a food fight.

I didn't see the porn aspect at all. I thought that her mouth was open because she was startled and laughing, and if that were clear or colored liquid it wouldn't give the impression of milk/moisturizer. Now I feel naive and embarrassed, which is a novel sensation for me...

This closer resembles wet-and-messy. Which is still, for some people, incredibly erotic.

I don't really see it. This is a complete overreaction and makes no sense. They are selling this to women, so a cum shot would not really be appropriate for the demographic they're targeting. You are overthinking this!

Porn image is the first thing I thought of when I saw this ad.

I think it's telling just how 'pornified' our culture is that they have no qualms about using ejaculation imagery to sell products *to women*. (These sorts of ad campaigns are always run by test audiences first, so this one was obviously received well enough by their target demographics to be greenlighted.)

As porn exposure (and social talk thereabout) has become more and more pervasive even among very young people, we now have a generation of young women who have grown up with the idea not only that life-success is defined by the ability to gain males' sexual interest (that one's been around for a while), but that boys/men will only be interested in them if they allow themselves to be used in particular, degrading/disempowering sexual ways.

This ad 'works' on women because it subconsciously generates anxiety in female viewers (by reminding them of the 'role' that's expected of them by men in a pornified culture), and then offers a product which can be purchased to allay this anxiety by assuring women that they will be not only 'youthful' and 'beautiful', but perceived as suitably sexually attractive by 'porn' standards.

Advertising psychology is weird, but disturbing in how well it works.

Um....looks like a milk and honey product that I might really like. Usually, I see where you are coming from, but not in this case. Let us not become the crazies when we are trying to educate the public on the very real problems we have with advertising and social norms impact.

I wish she was smiling, and not just standing there with a surpised look on her face and her mouth gaping open. It's a bit suggestive, to me, just because of the wide open mouth. I don't really see "cum shot" in this image. The liquid is way too, well, MUCH, and using the suggested imagery in this kind of add makes almost no sense whatsoever. I mean, really, what woman would want to buy a product that made her immediately think "this would be like getting cum all over my face"?? Certainly not me or anyone I know! I think there's a bit of porn-phobia going on here. And I don't even like porn, and think it's sick in general. But there's a danger in seeing it everywhere - kind of like the whole "I can't let my daughter play in my 10foot tall fenced backyard, because someone might rappell over the fence and rape her" hysteria that tends to grip some mothers lately.

I agree with Sandra D. I'd never have seen your take had I not read your take. So who's doing the "porning" really? Maybe the problem in this particular case is yours.

Katie, since the products are "superfoods"--usually a buzzword applied to those with antioxidants(tho unclear how much benefit if applied to or even poured on skin, let alone top of head;)), why is it a thick white viscous liquid that she's messily recieving with her eyes closed, from above---Elmer's glue, white paint, and thickened milk products like vanilla shakes don't evoke pomegranate extract, vitamin C, acai, or any of the brightly colored fruits & vegetables the package artistic designers used to inspire the bright colors in the actual packaging for the products. It's not the purity of resh clear rainwater showers that she's prostrating herself to, either. What do you think the image of a fully made up woman with heavy eyebrow pencil and bright lipstick being passively drenched in white sticky stuff is supposed to call up on first glance that would make women want to buy the moisturizer?
If they were going for a DoubleDare sliming joke, why not make it green, like two of the top SuperFoods, Brocoli and Soinach? ;) Her hair is certainly slimed with goop!! When I first saw this in a Sephora email to me, I wondered why she was swallowing the goop--the streams on the side of her mouth--was this a moisturizer you swallow? The point is not that we consciously recognize it as a cum shot--that can just mean we are not the intended audience who is familiar with this symbolism. the point is does it work as anything else that's supposed to motivate you to buy it or want it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukkake_%28sex_act%29

For those not being dirty enough to recognize the imagery.

I think it's pretty overt. I "saw it" immediately as well - in fact I was taken aback that such a mainstream company would have such an ad campaign.

As for why they would use this imagery, well it's definitely somewhat provocative - it's generating attention, so that is one plus for it (from the perspective of the ad agency/Sephora). Also, there are increasing amounts of women who watch porn and who enjoy it, especially young women, so I disagree that every female is going to necessarily see the porn imagery as a negative. There are, believe it or not, a lot of women out there who find "cum shots" and the such incredibly arousing.

I think the message- "you too can be a sexy porn-worthy sexpot"- is what draws female attention. The ad evokes a desire to be desirable in this particularly trendy and provocative sort of way. Yes, it hit me immediately as a "cum shot", no doubt about it (and no pun intended).

Geez, if that's a cum shot, I and my puny tangerine-sized prostate are feeling awfully inadequate. I think she's getting serviced by an elephant.

But yeah, that's intended to be porny.

This is obviously a cumshot.

What confuses me is that this ad, in addition to most of the ads in your previous posts about this, are marketing to women. While it is (or has become) a fantasy of many men to ejaculate on a woman's face -- and so such imagery would understandably appeal to men -- I don't get the impression it's a common fantasy among women to have a man ejaculate on their face. So how is the advertising supposed to appeal to them?

It would be amusing I guess if this comes from ads made by men, creating ads that appeal to them, and not giving thought as to why and whether the ad would appeal to women. I'd like to think that with the money involved in advertising campaigns, and the fact that marketers are professionals with specialized training, that this kind of gross error would not occur. But who knows people are idiots.

I'm perplexed by the number of people who seem to be familiar with porn imagery.

I had never seen the imagery and was puzzled by the ad--it didn't look refreshing, appetizing, silly or any of the other memes around playful yet vaguely power-related and or sadistic old time mainstream memes like throw the pretty girl in the water in her clothes, or drench the bouffant haired/perfectly dressed beauty in the rain--the first being to make her a little ridiculous & have a sexy wet shot, the second more romantic old style, to show he loves her even without all the primping & perfection. So to me it was --why is there white plastic goop all over her hair, why is her mouth open so wide, and why does she have so much lipstick on for an ad about natural SuperFood products? It didn't seem intended to be funny, but to me it was. Funnier now that I've read SI's post, because you can see exactly how close to explicit & not they worked it!

To me, this ad just looks like bathing in milk, a natural beauty treatment that has been in use for a very, VERY long time.

just to give a little cultural context for those who are have been brought up on this type of imagery directed at women, here's what a the norm for a milk bath would have been in the not so distant past when advertising standards for what was mainstream were very different. It's a current ad, btw :
http://www.epicbeautyguide.com/2010/02/cleopatra-beauty-treatments/

what used to be considered pornographic is now disseminated widely as simply advertising or entertainment and both verbal and visual references to pornography in popular culture are increasingly common.

I think this comment deserves to be approached with greater scrutiny. What determines whether we consider an image to be "pornographic" is quite a culturally specific variable, and it reflects deeply upon the values of the time.

When we adults were growing up in the pre-internet Dark Ages, pornography had an ironclad monopoly on the depiction and discussion of sexuality and the nude body. Despite sex being a far more natural human and universal experience than, say, consumerism (which is the basic message of most ads), its particulars were so deeply marginalized in mainstream culture that porn had a generally unchallenged position as the one form in which sexuality wasn't censored. So, growing up with this reality, most of us would quite reasonably associate any visual/verbal cues, that remind us of sex, with pornography. The more diluted sexuality is in the mainstream, the stronger that association is.

To simply say that the culture has been "pornified" is a huge missed opportunity; why not examine why an image of, say, a semen-covered face was ever restricted to porn in the first place? It's not as though a camera crew in the Valley invented these things. Is there a rational reason why hardcore porn is (save for some very obscure art)the only medium in which we find images of ejaculation? Is it that hard to imagine a culture in which one such a natural and universal experience of our species is a proportionately normal topic, rather than a taboo?

(By the way, I don't agree that 'cumshot' really applies to this image; one porn trope I've never encountered is semen being dumped by the bucketload atop someone's head, so I don't think it's a direct connection. What the pic does convey strongly is sensual ecstasy - someone enjoying a tactile sensation out of all proportion - and I sure wish there were a skincare product that actually delivered that.)

Pictures of space are often now called 'space porn'. If you google images that phrase with safe search off, the first three pictures are porn but the fourth is of space. 'Disaster porn' is even more well known as a non-sexual type of porn. Currently the top result on google for disaster porn for me is: '8.8 Earthquake struck Japan triggering a Tsunami Alert'.

Maybe the rise of such cultural terms imply that staring at space and staring at disasters is a little bit pathetic; a failure to accompany looking with appropriate feeling, a failure to organize our lives so that we are not sponges for images, a failure that leaves us alone. Perhaps these terms reflect a middle-ground in how people understand porn, not repudiating it outright but not being absorbed or defined by it either.

I found some more ejaculation imagery for you. I definitely agree that any liquid being splashed on someone, especially from above, is clearly a reference to sex. Duh, right?

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l2v0e5JkLX1qbcwdao1_500.jpg

Ashley,why not read the comments before you so you consider and respond to the contributions of others? Not only was Doubledare mentioned three times above, it was given as a detailed example to show why the Sephora image was not a doubledare reference/take off. Please go back & let us know why you disagree with those differences. It seems like you didn't consider them/notice them, and you certainly didn't respond when the points were made or acknowledge them.

Reminds me of The Church Lady who sees porn and blasphemy everywhere she looks. This ad is more of mirror than a portrait.

Maybe it's a generational thing, but I and my friends definitely read this image as a cumshot. We actually saw this ad before reading this post, and were wondering why they thought this would be an effective ad-ploy for women.

At any rate, it definitely turned us off from buying the product. :\

I don't know who has ejaculate that looks like that. Or what sort of sexual organ would just pour a bucketful on a woman's head. You can argue that the pose and nature of pouring a white liquid on a woman is reminiscent of bukkake, but this really looks nothing like ejaculate. It looks like a woman having lotion poured on her head. Bathing in the product (especially when it's something luxurious) is nothing unusual or controversial in ads. Think of women diving into pools of chocolate and the like.