There is a large billboard advertisement for Hunky Dorys, a brand of potato crisps (chips for your Americans) that I have to pass everyday on my way to work.
It consists of a picture of three skimpily clad (stripper-style lingerie) women lying on a bed, eating said crisps. The test reads “Which one of them would you throw out of bed for eating Hunky Dorys?”. Underneath each girl is her name, and a number to text, so you can vote to “throw” your least favourite “out of bed”.
This doesn’t so much offend me as give me deeply oogy feeling.
Not only is it objectifying women as sex objects, it also portrays us as disposable, controllable, passive beings. It makes me really uncomfortable.
Needless to say I shall be writing to the company and won’t be buying their product, but is my gut response to this understandable to anyone else, or is it just me who feels this has crossed a line?
Even without the sexist part of it, it’s offensive. Compare game shows now to fifteen years ago. Before, you get the most answers correct, you win. Now, they promote backstabbing and treachery as ideals. There are ‘weakest links’ and ‘moles’, and sneaky alliances, evictions, and the like. Most of it, of course, done via the anonymity of text messaging.
irishgirl, I think you’re reading the wrong message here. The ad actually means “Throw someone out of bed for eating crisps? Yah, you wish! Not when they’re Hunky Dory’s! Now go and buy our crisps at once and one day, loser, you might have someone as attractive as this in your bed! (Not that it’s likely, but we figure you’re dumb enough to hope).”
You’re right, it’s crass, sexist, demeaning and exploitative… just not in the way you thought.
Of course you’re not wrong. I’m trying to imagine how anyone would create such an advert. On top of being offensive, it’s completely pointless. And what’s the deal with text messaging? My understanding is that the Irish economy is booming, and I can’t imagine that people would be so underemployed that they would bother to text message a potato crisp advert. It seems like both the Europeans and the Japanese are obsessed with trivial text messaging. Even the BBC encourages international listeners to send text messages. My cell phone plan charges me extra for each text message, and they’re limited to 180 characters. Email, on the other hand, is free, and there’s no limit to the length of an email.
Oh yes, they would. And, as you are already getting at in your post, this doesn’t have very much to do with economy but more with the fact that we do really love our text messaging over here. I’m guilty as charged and will send completely frivolous messages to my friends all the time. In fact I hardly ever actually ring anyone on my mobile phone. I even text people in the UK and in the States.
Back to the OP. I think you read the message completely right and I agree it is utterly insulting. I think a lot of women won’t speak out against such ads because they are afraid of being perceived as having no sense of humour. I think I’m perfectly well equipped with such a sense but was never one for the old “it is not sexist it is now ironic” trick.
You’re probably right to be upset, but maybe it could be a little more focused. The catch-phrase (used to refer to a pretty girl or guy) “I wouldn’t kick her/him out of bed for eating crackers” (original version – see, eating crackers in bed gets crumbs in the sheets which’ll make you itch, see? S/he’d have to be a pretty hot property to let him/her stick around, right?) is neither a new invention nor inherently sexist: it can at least be used to objectify either sex. If the Hunky-Dory Crisp Company is objectifying only women, then they are guilty of misreading their market – women snack too. The billboard you see may be targetting men, but I’d guess there are ads devoted to the degradation of the less-fair sex too.
The real problem is, if all the women in the ad are attractive, is that they’re getting the meaning of the catch-phrase wrong. Desirable bodies don’t often get kicked out of bed no matter what kind of disgusting sludge they might eat there. If Hunky-Dory wants to accent the tastiness of their product, they should highlight the incredibly hideous, nauseating mutants that you still wouldn’t kick out of bed, so long as they brought some of those delightful potato crisps along. Of course, then they’d be inviting their product’s association with the unappealing crowd, which is against the rule that says you show only the brave and beautiful consuming your mass-produced, salty dreck.
The idea that attractive women dressed in lingerie on your bed is a good thing did not wait for a flash-in-the-pan (Hey! Deep-Fryer Joke!) brand of potato-crisps to gain currency among male (or occasional female) snackers. The fact that raising the idea of sex can sell merchandise isn’t new either. The fact that an advertising agency got things completely backwards is new and fresh – oh, wait, it really isn’t. Never mind.
So, be angry if you want to, but realize that mostly you’re mad at something for which Hunky-Dory is only incrementally responsible. Take a deep breath and objectify some person you find attractive today. Perhaps by offering them something greasy and fattening.
I don’t know what sorts of men you’ve met in your travels but most men I know don’t use advertising to form their opinion on the role of women in society nor how they ought to be treated. Men who do, need very little provocation anyway. It’s a fantasy add with a ridiculous premise, I grant you that. But it got your attention and it sure as hell got other people’s attention as well. I’ve not seen it myself but I’ll wager most men aren’t thinking about who they’ll throw out of bed. In fact, eating chips with three beautiful scantily clad women is not part of any fantasy I’d ever experienced.
The entire add is a joke. A trite and sophmoric one, but still a joke. It is not a referendum on women as independant and equal to men beings vs. women as sex objects.
Oh, I know the phrase well, as either “I wouldn’t kick him/her out of bed on a cold night” or “I wouldn’t kick him/her out of bed for eating toast”.
Doesn’t mean I don’t find the ad any less oogy.
It may be a joke, but it’s one in particularly poor taste, and I’m allowed to complain about that, right?
I don’t have issues with most adverts, not the “Hello Boys” wonderbra ad, not the majority of ads with skimpily clad women… this one just pushed my buttons.
I’ve never heard any expression about kicking someone out of bed for eating crackers. In any case, I could think of better ways to compliment someone. Should we assume, then, that they don’t really expect anyone to send a text message?
I agree that anyone whose opinion about women could be so easily influenced by an advert is probably already decided. It’s offensive because there’s somebody in some advertising office who thinks such a thing could be amusing and that I’m stupid enough to be influenced by such an ad. Maybe they don’t even consider someone like me to be a target. And maybe there really are people who will buy their potato chips just because of a picture with three women in bikinis. But if that’s the case then you might as well assume that such an ad can affect the way women are perceived, albeit at subliminal level.
Pukah: I’d gladly get unlimited text messaging and use it to communicate (especially long distance), if I knew enough people who’d use it in response. The thing is that few people in the States seem to be amenable to using it as people in Europe and Japan do. (I sent a text message to a friend once, and he didn’t even notice it until four months later.) What I don’t understand is why TV shows and adverts want people to use it.
