Even though I can’t read the text, I thought this ad was worth putting up. I think I get the gist of it just fine.
Via Vintage Ads.
Vintage Ads put up another example of an ad, this one from 1931, using the idea of the “savage.” In this one, her “impossible” behavior is compared to an Electrolux refridgerator.
NEW! Vintage Ads offered us another on this theme. The text reads: “make like a medicine man in Voodoo Shorts.” Don’t miss the spear.
Prompted by Gwen’s recent post on adoption announcement cards, Carmen from the excellent blog Racialicious sent us this link to a post about onesies for transnationally adopted infants by iBastard. As iBastard says
…when people go out of their way to say something, there’s usually more to it than the literal message. There’s a metamessage (the message behind the message itself) or subtext of some kind.
These first two onesies (found at Racialicious and here respectively) are from children adopted from Guatemala:
And this one, also found at Racialicious, is for babies adopted from China:
The first and last one associate babies with goods (“special delivery” and “imported”) that can be bought. Those with superior resources (i.e., Americans?) can buy these goods.
The middle one de-humanizes Guatamalans. As Resistance notes: What is a Guatling? “Is it like an earthling? A foundling? An underling? A gosling? A yearling?”
All advertise for others that these children are adopted transnationally. And why might an adoptive parent want to advertise such things? Without trivializing how much such parents love their children, we do seem to have a phenomenon in which a transnational adoption is considered a humanitarian good that proves you are not racist, into multiculturalism, and a card-carrying liberal good person (the discourse around Angelina Jolie’s adopted children is part of this).
What do you think the meta-messages are here? iBastard offers a translation over at Racialicious.
Oh and, in the spirit of resistance, check out this parody t-shirt made by iBastard:
Also in dressing your kids and meta-messages: leftish t-shirts for kids, “future M.I.L.F.” t-shirts and the like, “God Hates Fags” t-shirts, sexist t-shirts for kids, trucker girl booties, and more.
Other posts on advertising your politics on your metaphorical sleeve: “I’m Saving The Planet – What Are You Doing?”, “Tough Guys Wear Pink”, “Real Girls Eat Meat”, “True Love Waits”, “I Love My Big Tatas”, and “Use Your Period For Good”.
Z from It’s The Thought That Counts sends us this figure showing the wage gap between various types of groups. The point is to show that wage differentials are most extreme across countries, not within them. In an article, Kerry Howley writes:
Wage gaps between observably identical Nigerian workers in the United States and Nigerian workers in Nigeria (same gender, education, work experience, etc) are… considerable. They swamp the wage gaps between men and women in the US. They swamp the gaps between whites and blacks in the US. Actually, they swamp the wage gaps between whites and blacks in the United States in 1855. For several countries, the effect of border restrictions on the wages of workers of equal productivity “is greater than any form of wage discrimination (gender, race, or ethnicity) that has ever been measured.” The labor protectionism that keeps poor workers out of rich countries upholds one of the largest remaining price distortions in any global market.
Click here for the full research report.
Ghanimah A. sent us these images for Cordaid, an “international development organisation” that specializes in “emergency aid and structural poverty eradication.” We would love to know what you think.
Culture-sharing, of course, is nothing new. But with new forms of media, they are intensified and, increasingly, we get to see what “they” do with “our” art forms. Jenelle N. sent in this fascinating music video of artists in Bulgaria appropriating American hip hop and, correspondingly, elements of “Black” culture (highly produced and largely invented by music executives) and blending it with more “indigenous” art forms (please do note all of my scarequotes).
This duet is, as Jenelle explains, “between two of Bulgaria’s hottest chalga performers, Azis and Malina called Iskam, Iskam (I Want, I Want).”
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_uHa8gTyxU[/youtube]
See also the Google sari.
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.
In this series, I offer a typology reflecting the ways in which people of color are used in advertising aimed primarily at whites (see the first and the second in the series). In this, the third edition, I suggest that sometimes people of color are included because the idea of “diversity” triggers the related ideas of “cool,” “hip,” “urban,” and “youth,” which also invoke “modernity” and the idea of being “global,” “cosmopolitan,” even “progressive” politics.
In this ad, a mix of races are used. Notice that the ad also happens to include, in the bottom image, photography, what looks like a dark beer, and espresso (all “upper class” “sophisticated” interests) and, in the top image, we see that the woman who appears Asian is an art dealer.
In this next ad, again, we see a mix of races enjoying what looks like a train ride (how European!) with hard liquor. The text:
The shortest distance between two places isn’t nearly as interesting.
I think it is no accident that “interesting” and racial difference are both present in this ad.
In this next ad we see a racially ambiguous male and a black woman. Notice the clothes that they are wearing (casually sophisticated) and the delicate nature of their coffee cups. This is leisure, not some working-class Joe with a cup o’ joe. Text:
3658 miles from the coffee fields of the Columbian Andes. But still the perfect climate for Colombian Coffee.
The idea of travel, of course, invokes a certain degree of cosmopolitan-ness and wealth. And the “perfect” climate refers not just to weather, but to the kind of company Colombian Coffee drinkers keep.
This ad for H&M is a bit different. Instead of invoking sophistication and cosmopolitan-ness, I think it invokes who and what is “hip” and “cool” and “diversity” is used as a signifier. The text:
H&M is Europe’s leading fashion retailer [Europe again], with over 850 stores worldwide [a reference to being “global”]. Offering high-fashion [i.e., “sophisticated?”] and quality for men, women and children at great prices.
These last two ads, instead of using people of color to emphasize being “hip” or “sophisticated,” use them to signal “youth” and what being young represents. Young people are on the forefront of “cool,” of course, and also, in some sense, define “progressive” in that they herald a more “diverse” and “tolerant” future (hello, Obama).
Next up: Including people of color so as to trigger the idea of human diversity.
Don’t miss the others in the series:
(1) Including people of color so as to associate the product with the racial stereotype.
(2) Including people of color to invoke (literally) the idea of “color” or “flavor.”
This “Onslaught” ad by Dove has garnered a lot of attention and positive press:
The idea, of course, is that we need to protect our daughters from the images that may harm their self-esteem or make them uncomfortable about their bodies. A great message, no doubt.
However, corporate activism usually has limits and contradictions (as do most things in life, really). Miguel sent us this ad spoof that points out that many of the images the Dove ad says we should be protecting our daughters from are actually used in Axe ads–and Axe is owned by Unilever, the same company that owns Dove.
So Unilever manages to target both markets–those who respond to sexualized images and those who find them harmful–through different brands. This is a common tactic–because large multinational companies own so many different brands, they can market to many different groups of consumers; when we reject one product because of its production process or advertising and buy another instead, there’s a very good chance we’re buying from the same corporate entity, just a different brand name.
As one blogger nicely put it:
It’s a parent’s responsibility to make sure the damaging messages they themselves produce don’t reach your kids.
That is, Dove is telling parents to protect their kids, as if Dove CARES, but Dove’s parent company is producing those very same messages. (It’s kind of like a single corporation owning a beer company and running Alcoholics Anonymous. How very convenient for both.)
A commenter pointed out that Greenpeace made an ad based on Dove’s “Onslaught” commercial that brings up the effects of palm oil production in the destruction of forests in Indonesia:
Thanks, Dangger!
NEW: There is a terrific post at Moment of Choice about one woman’s experience auditioning for a Dove Real Woman commercial. From the post:
Under the guise of looking for women who felt truly comfortable in their own skin, no matter what they looked like, they asked us to bare all or most of it, to prove just how comfortable we really were…A young peppy assistant demonstrated how they wanted us to shake our hands in the air like we just didn’t care and do a full 360 for the camera and male judging panel.
It’s a fascinating inside look at a process most of us never take part in, and reinforces the fact that corporate activism often covers an awful lot of business-as-usual behind the scenes.
Disclosure: My dissertation, called “Female Genital Mutilation” in the American Imagination, is about how different U.S. constituencies (mainly doctors, activists, journalists, and academics) have framed female genital cutting over the past 30 years. I offer this context for the images below (submitted by Craig C. and Breck and found via boingboing and adsoftheworld):
There is great conflict among feminist activists over how to go about decreasing the prevalence of “female genital cutting,” better known to most as “female genital mutilation.” One of the reasons for this conflict is the tendency of “Western” feminists to impose their own worldview onto communities where we find cutting (mostly among some ethnic groups in Africa, but also found in the Middle East and Asia). For example, the importance of sexual pleasure derived from the clitoris, and the relationship between orgasm and women’s liberation, is a central tenent of post-second wave feminism in the West. From this perspective, reduction of the external clitoris (clitorectomy) appears particularly horrendous and an obvious sign of women’s oppression. However, many women who are part of communities where cutting occurs find this logic to be irrelevant to their lives. Sexual pleasure takes a backseat to the benefits that come with cutting for the women themselves (group membership, attainment of adult female status, marriageability, becoming fully feminine — it varies tremendously, but be sure that the practices are important and meaningful in their own contexts). In any case, if “Western” feminists are going to try to “help” women in other parts of the world, many women say they’d much rather have clean drinking water and freedom from penalizing economic policies imposed by the U.S., than sexual pleasure. (I should point out, by the way, that whether and which and how much genital cutting practices actually do eliminate sexual pleasure and orgasm is hotly debated.)
These images are part of a campaign to raise awareness about and opposition to female genital cutting in Spain (I editorialize below):
I try not to get too emotional on this blog, but this hits me right where it hurts, and I find these images utterly appalling. The idea, of course, is that when women’s sexual pleasure has been excised (and remember, this is a controversial assumption) they feel nothing, but the implication is that they ARE nothing. These ads suggest that women who have experienced genital cutting are equivalent to fuck toys. Everything else about them disappears in these ads. They are completely defined by the status of their genitals, and the status of their genitals is the status of their souls. Even if it is true that these women no longer experience clitoral orgasm, or even experience pain during intercourse, they are still multidimensional human beings who love others and are loved by those around them for their uniqueness and individuality… yes, even the men they sleep with.
What a horribly offensive ad campaign. The fact that it is likely made for people in Spain and may never be seen by women who are genitally cut makes it no less offensive. Instead, it is an excellent example of the kind of ethnocentric, arrogant transnational activism that makes people in the West look like total assholes.
I should clarify: I am making these observations as a sociologist, not as an activist. I do have opinions about various sorts of male and female genital cuttings, but that’s not my point here. My point is not whether or not FGCs are oppressive to women or whether individuals in the West should be involved in eradication efforts. My point is to interrogate how we go about expressing opposition and intervention. There are many ways in which to go about this. As you can tell, I do not particularly like this one.
UPDATE: Racialicious made my day when they asked to repost this post on their own blog. It is well worth taking a look at how different the comments are here versus there and thinking about what that means.
