food/agriculture

This Australian ad for Lipton tea suggests that it’s mind clarifying qualities are so good that it could help even George Bush achieve the feat of naming all 50 states.

This Brazilian ad for Rolling Stone, featuring a picture of George W. Bush, reads: “We don’t show naked women to sell more. At the most, we show some asses.”

This Chinese Greenpeace ad, portraying Bush’s spin on global warming, reads: “Everyone’s entitled to an opinion. Voice yours at forum.greenpeace.org.”

This Chinese ad for an erasable pen reads: “Everyone makes mistakes.” 

In Malaysia, Bush is used to sell Smart cars.  Text: “Still looking for weapons of mass destruction.  Not smart.” 

Also in Malaysia, Amnesty International makes fun of Bush in their effort to inspire opposition to Guantanamo Bay.  “Write to him and help stop torture at Guantanamo Bay.  Remember, use simple words.”

This is a Mexican ad for a dog kennel.  “We don’t discriminate any kind of breed.”  (The source says that, in Mexico, like in the U.S., “dog” is a name for a bad person.)

 This ad for a Mexican newspaper reads: “Such a complex world needs a good explanation.”

This is an ad for the movie American Psycho in New Zealand.

In Portugal, playing war games (paint ball) is advertised as equivalent to playing George W. Bush.

This Swiss ad threatens, if you fall off your bicycle without a helmet, you may end up as dumb as George W. Bush.

These and more borrowed from here, found via adfreak.

Update: There have been some really nice points in the comments about how, in the process of making fun of Bush, we are also seeing the further stigmatization of “people with developmental disabilities, brain injuries, and psychological diagnoses” (that from Penny in the comments). 

A humorous look at how yogurt is marketed to the generic category, “woman.” Quite funny! (From Current TV via Jezebel.)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf_roIC9Pso[/youtube]

NEW: Here’s an actual yogurt ad that makes it clear that a) yogurt is for women and b) yogurt somehow makes women feel more like “themselves.” Thanks, 73man!

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.

These images were all used (along with lots of others) in a 2003 campaign in which PETA, obviously, compared modern agricultural practices and eating meat with the Holocaust:

Found here.

Found here.

Found here.

I assume it will not surprise anyone to learn that many people were offended by the campaign. I can imagine using these images in courses on food/agriculture, social movements, natural resources and the environment (especially in discussions of what rights non-human animals have), and even lectures about historical memory (for instance, when and how does it become acceptable to use historical tragedies like the Holocaust as symbols in other arguments, rather than as events in and of themselves?).

Thanks to an anonymous poster for pointing this campaign out!

NEW: Elizabeth (from Blog of Stench) sent in this ad (found here) PETA apparently attempted to run in the Portage Daily Graphic in Manitoba, Canada:

The ad references an incident on a bus in Manitoba where a man beheaded a fellow passenger and compares it to the slaughtering of animals.

Thanks, Elizabeth!

This interactive chart in the NYT uses shapes to represent how much the average American spends in different categories. Larger shapes make up a larger part of spending; colors show changes in prices from March 2007 to March 2008. Red means an increase in the relative cost, light tan and white relative stability, and blue a decrease.

Note from Gwen: Since it was causing some people with Firefox problems, I’m changing it so you have to click to see it, rather than having it come up automatically when you visit the site. Hope this helps.

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Also note the girls-as-using-their-looks-and-friendliness-to-manipulate and boys-as-using-money-to-get-what-they-want themes:

Thanks to our reader, Laura L!

Also in the sexualization of kids: the Miley Cyrus scandal ‘n stuff and modeling, tramp stamps, and stripper poles for kids.

From the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications 2007 report on the Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops.

Andrea G. in Switzerland snapped these pictures of an ad campaign for TerraSuisse natural agriculture. Their tagline translates as “TerraSuisse guarantees natural Swiss agriculture.” They might be useful for a discussion of doing gender (West and colleagues) or gender as performativity (Butler). As Andrea S. noted, it’s obvious instantly that the bird is supposed to be female and the chipmunk male by their pose alone.

Posed like a chick:

Posed like a dude:

They might, also, be a nice contrast to this one for which a gender is not immediately apparent (to me…but who knows in Switzerland):

Thanks Andrea!

Julie C. caught this assumptive KFC ad:

As Julie says: “Because, of course, only moms cook…” Thanks Julie C!

Also in women are responsible for cooking and cleaning: a commercial montage, Italian dye ad with a twist, women love to clean, homes of the future, what’s for dinner, honey?, liberation through quick meals, and my husband’s an ass.