{"id":68334,"date":"2015-11-16T11:21:54","date_gmt":"2015-11-16T16:21:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=68334"},"modified":"2015-11-16T13:28:39","modified_gmt":"2015-11-16T18:28:39","slug":"covergirls-star-wars-collection-they-never-had-a-chance-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/11\/16\/covergirls-star-wars-collection-they-never-had-a-chance-really\/","title":{"rendered":"On the insidious sexism of the Covergirl Star Wars collection"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, Star Wars is out with a new movie and instead of pretending female fans don’t exist, Disney has decided to license the Star Wars brand to Covergirl. A\u00a0reader named David, intrigued,\u00a0sent in\u00a0a two-page ad from Cosmopolitan<\/em> for analysis.<\/p>\n

What I find interesting about this ad campaign — or, more accurately\u00a0— boring,\u00a0<\/em>is its invitation to\u00a0women to choose whether they are good or bad. “Light side or\u00a0dark side. Which side are you on?” it asks. Your makeup purchases, apparently, follow.<\/p>\n

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This is the old — and by “old” I mean ooooooooold — tradition of dividing women into good and bad. The Madonna and the whore. The woman on the pedestal and her fallen counterpart. Except Covergirl, like many cosmetics companies before that have used exactly the same gimmick, is offering women the opportunity to choose which she wants to be. Is this some sort of feminist twist? Now we get to choose<\/em>\u00a0whether men want to marry us or just fuck us?\u00a0Great.<\/p>\n

But that part’s just boring. What’s obnoxious about the ad campaign is the idea that, for women, what really matters about the ultimate battle between good and evil is whether it goes with her complexion. It affirms the stereotype that women are deeply<\/em> trivial, shallow, and vapid. What interests us about Star Wars? Why, makeup, of course!<\/p>\n

If David — who also noted the inclusion of a single Asian model as part of the Dark Side — hadn’t asked me to write about this, I probably wouldn’t have. It feels like low hanging fruit because it’s just\u00a0makeup advertising and who cares<\/em>. But this constant message that women are genuinely excited\u00a0at the idea of getting to choose which color packet to use as some sort of idiotic contribution to a battle of\u00a0good versus evil\u00a0<\/em>is corrosive.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the constant reiteration of the idea that we\u00a0are thrilled<\/em> to paint\u00a0our\u00a0faces actually obscures the fact that we are essentially required\u00a0<\/em>to do so\u00a0if we want to\u00a0be taken seriously as professionals, potential partners or, really, valuable human beings. So, not only does this kind of message teach us\u00a0not to take women seriously at all, it hides the very serious way in which we are actively forced to capitulate to the male gaze\u00a0— every. damn. day. — and feed capitalism while we’re at it.<\/p>\n

This ad isn’t asking us if we want to be on the dark side or the light side. It’s asking us if we want to wear makeup or wear makeup. It’s not a choice at all. But it sure does make subordination seem fun.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, Star Wars is out with a new movie and instead of pretending female fans don’t exist, Disney has decided to license the Star Wars brand to Covergirl. A\u00a0reader named David, intrigued,\u00a0sent in\u00a0a two-page ad from Cosmopolitan for analysis. What I find interesting about this ad campaign — or, more accurately\u00a0— boring,\u00a0is its invitation to\u00a0women […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":68337,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[257,55,2089,129,23703,343,309],"class_list":["post-68334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hygiene","tag-gender","tag-gender-beauty","tag-media","tag-marketing","tag-tvmovies","tag-warmilitary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/11\/33.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68334","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\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68334"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68356,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68334\/revisions\/68356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}