This satirical cartoon about Wonder Woman, found here, might be an interesting conversation-starter about power and sexuality, and how we’re always expressing our own sexuality within a set of social assumptions about gender, power, and so on.
Thanks, Krystal-Lynn M.!
NEW! Here is a Wonder Woman comic (found here) that depicts her using her sexuality as a weapon. Thanks to Potts for sending this one along!
This ad is from April, 1908:
Beer as a healthy tonic–I’m surprised beer companies haven’t returned to this, now that we’re obsessed with whole grains again. Apparently they also used to call Schlitz “liquid bread.”
Thanks to Larry H. at the Los Angeles Times Daily Mirror blog!
We’ve posted about Tom Ford‘s most recent provocative campaign (see here), but Urban Artiste drew our attention to an interesting development. The Italian Advertising Institute has banned one of his ads for being too “vulgar,” “sexually implicit,” “beyond bad taste,” and an “offensive gesture which insults women and the dignity of all” (quotes found at The Daily Telegraph). Which ad?
WARNING: The images in post are not safe for work.
Here’s an Axe ad, sent in by Krystal-Lynn M., the idea being that if you use Axe, women will perform oral sex on you in the bathtub:
NEW: p.j. sent us this ad for Lynx, another name that Axe is marketed under in some countries:
NEW! (Mar. ’10): Katrin sent in this video about the LynxJet marketing campaign, which plays on the idea of the sexy airline stewardess who is sexually available and eager to please her male partner:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QjcUf5pG3k[/youtube]
Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.
In this ad for Bud Lite, we see a reversal of the usual gender pattern–in this case, a woman has x-ray vision and uses it to imagine what men look like under their clothes. When a chubby man appears and she sees his body under his clothes, she’s disgusted and looks away:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOEMI8HRhlA[/youtube]
An interesting example of men’s bodies under scrutiny.
Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.
Kate N. pointed us towards this article in the New York Times today discussing 25 years of Marines recruitment aimed at women. Below is the content of their slide show.
1976:
1978:
1980:
1984:
1988:
1995:
1995:
2000:
2000:
The article says that the Marines have only recently began a concerted attempt to recruit women. Does anyone have any information about the shift in the racial targeting? Or is that just an artifact of the slide show?
Thanks so much for the tip, Kate!
Also in military recruitment: which military would you join?, the homefront, and war as entertainment.
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I found this ad for an umbilical cord blood storage company in the April 2008 issue of Healthy Las Vegas.
It provides a list of all kinds of very scary-sounding diseases as reasons you should pay to store your baby’s blood cord. It’s another example of scaring parents into buying expensive products to protect their kids–and, obviously, if you won’t spend the money to store your baby’s umbilical cord blood for years, you aren’t a very good parent.
I went to the company’s website. Under the heading “You Only Get One Chance to Bank Cord Blood” it says:
Banking a baby’s cord blood could prove invaluable should you ever need it. You only have one chance to collect this vital fluid and minutes after your baby is born. This sample has the potential to not only help the baby in the future, but also to blood relatives such as parents and siblings. It offers a powerful medical resource in fighting devastating chronic and acute diseases. Think of it as an investment in your family’s future.
It costs $1,850 for the kit to collect the blood from a single birth, plus $95 a year, or $1600 for 18 years, to store it.
Just for fun I looked up the prevalence of some of the diseases listed in the ad. Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome occurs in about 1 out of every 380,000 people. For amyloidosis, it’s about 1 in 100,000. Less than 1 in 200,000 people have Wolman disease (these are all NIH estimates).
To put this in perspective, according to some calculations, a male African American child has about a 1 in 20 lifetime chance of being killed by gunfire. I don’t know what it is for white kids, but I bet that, risk-wise, you’d be better off buying your kid a bullet-proof vest than banking their cord blood.
