{"id":35179,"date":"2011-04-10T12:27:40","date_gmt":"2011-04-10T17:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=35179"},"modified":"2011-10-23T17:11:04","modified_gmt":"2011-10-23T22:11:04","slug":"non-virgin-women-are-just-like-used-cars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/04\/10\/non-virgin-women-are-just-like-used-cars\/","title":{"rendered":"Non-Virgin Women Are Just Like Used Cars (UPDATE)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lauren S. sent in this ad for a used car dealership that ran in the London Free Press<\/em>, a free newspaper in London, Ontario. The ad compares used cars to sexually experienced women with the lines, “You know you’re not the first. But do you really care?”:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As Lauren points out, it’s blatant objectification of women, but “in addition to objectifying women to sell vehicles, this campaign suggests that a woman’s sexual past is equivalent to depreciation.”<\/p>\n

I suppose someone could argue that the message that you shouldn’t “care” whether your women\/cars are “used” rejects the sexual double standard, but the objectification and the implication that non-virgin women are “used” <\/em>undermine any apparent rejection of that double standard.<\/p>\n

It’s not the first time we’ve seen this type of ad for used cars; we previously posted a BMW ad<\/a>, but in that case, I suspect (though we’ve never been able to confirm) that it might have been a spec ad made by an ad agency but never actually used by BMW. In this case, Lauren actually saw it in print.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 1:<\/strong><\/span> Well, I must give Dale Wurfel some credit. He is apparently an equal-opportunity objectifier. He ran a second ad that uses a man instead of a woman:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Via Wheels<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Of course, equal objectification doesn’t necessarily have equal effects. We live in a world with a sexual double standard. Calling a woman “used” resonates culturally in a way that it simply doesn’t for men, because we don’t punish men for sexual experience in the same way.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 2<\/strong><\/span>: Lauren let us know that the car dealership issued an apology:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

UPDATE: Comments closed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lauren S. sent in this ad for a used car dealership that ran in the London Free Press, a free newspaper in London, Ontario. The ad compares used cars to sexually experienced women with the lines, “You know you’re not the first. But do you really care?”: As Lauren points out, it’s blatant objectification of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[279,55,2096,2093,1770,221,120],"class_list":["post-35179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-objectification","tag-gender","tag-gender-femininity","tag-gender-objectification","tag-nation-canada","tag-cars","tag-sex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35179"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40898,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35179\/revisions\/40898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}