Julia W. was perusing the website of an Irish car insurance company, Insure.  The website had a special section devoted to “women drivers – driving alone.”  They introduce the topic like this:

It is, unfortunately, a fact of life that a woman on the streets alone, whether as driver, a cyclist or a pedestrian, is vulnerable to attack. If you are driving there are some basic precautions you can take.

And the site continues with a set of instructions (sampled below).  Of course, all drivers are vulnerable to attackers.  Even if women are statistically more vulnerable, both men and women can benefit from taking safety precautions.  Even the big, scary, male people are no match for a gun.  And, yet, vulnerability itself is constructed here as uniquely female and women are seen as categorically at risk.

Women spend their young and young adult lives dreaming of their wedding day, or so the stereotype goes.  Where might girls get the idea that weddings are a particularly important day in a woman’s life?

SociologicalMe sent in a wedding day toy for girls found at a Pathmark grocery store in Delaware:

And Mary, who blogs at Disney Princess Recovery, collected these examples of Disney Princess-themed wedding books for little girls:

So maybe it isn’t part of having two XX chromosomes.

The ad below is the first-ever British TV commercial advertising abortion services family planning options, including abortion.  It is being shown late at night and says:

If you’re late for your period, you could be pregnant. If you’re pregnant and not sure what to do, Marie Stopes International can help.

I don’t remember ever seeing such a commercial. Condoms, birth control pills, pregnancy tests, herpes medication, HPV vaccines, tampons, Viagra, and sex, sex, sex, YES. Abortion, NEVER. Salon seems to claim that it’s the first of its kind anywhere.

Have you ever seen such a thing where you live? What do you imagine are the politics around the airing of a commercial advertising abortion services?

Via Feministing.

We recently posted about an ad for internet service that used the metaphor of a prostitute.  It/she was “fast” and “cheap” with “satisfaction guaranteed.”  We also recently posted about national personifications, fictional or semi-fictional people used to represent countries.  This ad campaign, submitted by Mary S., has both.

Victoria, a city in British Columbia, is personified as “Victoria,” the sex worker.  “Victoria’s cheap,” the ad reads, “but she’ll show you a great time.”  The larger message, of course, is that places are like women and women are like places.  They are experiences to purchase and consume, preferably cheaply.

UPDATE: Some in the comments have suggested that I cropped the ad to make my point.  So here is the whole front page of the website, victoriascheap.com:

Kasia G. and Tom M. sent in this remarkable product designed to smooth out…     wait for it…     camel toe.

That’s right, women.  Listen up.  We want you to wear clothes so tight that we can see every bump and crevice on your body, but see… we don’t want you to actually have bodies.  Can you work on that for us, please?

(source)

(source)

Sent along by Dmitiry T.M.

Stephanie DeH., Cara McC., and our intern, Lauren McGuire, sent in this CPR certification campaign that embraces the idea that sex sells.  I initially added it to our post on using sex to sell unlikely things (e.g., organ donation and sea monkeys), but I changed my mind and decided it deserved its own discussion.

What was interesting to me about this example is the sexualization of the possibility of dying. The fact that a person might die is apparently not serious enough to make it unsexy.  It actually took me a minute to even notice the weirdness of sexualizing the risk of death.  After I noticed I thought “How crazy!”  But then I thought again: in a society that regularly sexualizes violence and murder, the sexualization of near-death is par for the course (which, of course, is why it didn’t strike me as particularly weird in the first place.

NSFW and possibly triggering, so images are after the jump:

The text at the bottom reads:

Now that we’ve got you interested in learning CPR and the abdominal thrust, go get properly certified by taking a class through one of the many certifying authorities in your local area.

Notice too that the “sex” being used to sell in this case is girl-on-girl. They also have a guy-on-girl theme, but I didn’t see any guy-on-guy CPR, maybe because it would be threatening to straight men (whereas straight women better tolerate lesbianism for reasons I won’t get into here).

This ad, spotted by Stephanie DeH. in a physical therapist’s office, asks viewers to donate blood with the argument that it’s “easier” to save a life than to save the world:

Text:

Saving the world isn’t easy. Saving a life is.
Just one pint of blood can save up to three lives.

The ad commits two fallacies.

First, it compares saving the whole world (or maybe every tree in the world) with saving just “a” life.  Saving a life may, indeed, be easier than saving the whole world, but it’s not a fair comparison.  Saving the whole world is hard, but about as hard as saving every life on it.

Second, it suggests that we have to choose.  “You could try to save the world,” the ad says, “but it’s pretty hopeless.  It’s much easier to save a life.  So put down that tree and donate blood.”  Giving blood, then, is placed in competition with environmental activism as if (or because) volunteerism is a zero sum game.