This Is (Soon To Be) a Real Thing in the Real World

by Shaker hallelujah_hippo





Speaking of beer... Molson Coors has realized that, apparently, not enough women drink beer. So they're aggressively attacking the problem by changing up their marketing, treating consumers that identify as women as individual human beings with variations in taste and interest, and starting a dialogue about the nuances of human experience and differing relationships with brewed beverages.



Whoops! Just kidding! They're actually making a pink, low-alcohol content, sweet beverage to attract all of us with ladee-brainz^TM! Animée also comes in a pale yellow and clear variety and is designed to allay women's fears of bloating, weight gain, and appearing too masculine.



I first ran across this (barf-tastic) news over in today's Skepchick Quickies and read more about it here.



My only quibble with the discussion at the second link is that it lacks some nuance: There is nothing wrong with liking pink, with liking sweet things, or with being feminine; the problem for me is propagating the idea that all women (and only women) like these things, regardless of what the subject/product is.

Assvertising

[Trigger warning for sexism; objectification.]

Via Copyranter, a charming advertisement from Lighthouse Brewing Company, which, according to its YouTube channel, was produced by a company called Politically Incorrect Entertainment Inc.

Two white dudes sit on a beach in slatted chairs, with a table between them on which sit two beer bottles, a la the ubiquitous Corona commercials. They are ogling a thin white woman in a bikini who stands at the water's edge with her back to them.

Guy 1 leans over to Guy 2 and says: "So what would you rather have—ice cold Lighthouse Beer, or her?"

Guy 2 says: "Are you kidding? It's great beer." They high-five each other. "Sheesh," says Guy 2. "She's hot, though. I'll give ya that."

"Yeah," says Guy 1.

Voiceover, as the camera lingers on the woman's ass in close-up as she bends over: "Lighthouse Brewing: Celebrating women in bikinis since 1998."

I think this is supposed to be a parody of beer commercials, but, the thing is, beer commercials are beyond parody. This just looks like rank misogyny, of the sort that necessarily implies all men are horrible human beings.

Today in Rape Culture

[Trigger warning for rape culture; misogyny; exploitation.]

Over at AlterNet, Sarah Seltzer has written a very fine article about some of the high-profile rape cases in which there has been a variety of hostility toward survivors, who find justice elusive. (Disclosure: I am quoted in the article.)

The headline of the article is: "Cop Rapes Woman at Gunpoint, 11-Year-Old Rape Victim Smeared, Accuser Sued for $2 Million: Is US Society Failing Victims?" The subhead is: "What is it with our inability to find justice for victims?" Those are very good questions, the answer to which are found in discussions of the rape culture, which Seltzer does quite well.

Which is what gives a horrible irony to the ads I was served while reading the article:


[Click to embiggen.]
The black-and-white advert is more complex than a screen cap suggests, as it is actually a series of two images—the first showing the girl sitting up and looking at the camera, the second showing her lying on her back, as if to suggest she has succumbed to a sexual invitation.

Treating women as an objectified sex class who exist in a perpetual state of consent and whose bodies are consumable public property is the cornerstone of the rape culture. This sort of exploitative advertising, which perpetuates the rape culture by reinforcing its narratives, is terrible in any context.

But to be obliged to gaze at sexualized young girls (who totes want to have sex with you; you don't even need to ask; their bodies are yours for the taking) alongside an article about women and girls who have survived sexual violence being failed by their society is a special kind of horror.

What is it with our inability to find justice for victims? I wonder.