I have two theories on why the people responsible for making adverts aimed at women end up making adverts that throb with a palpable, almost tangible misogyny.
THEORY THE FIRST. Such adverts are made by men who view women with simple and straightforward contempt. For them, women exist in no realm other than the purely functional: for cooking, for fucking, for looking pretty on the arm. It would therefore be impossible to conceive of an advert that might represent or attempt to comprehend a woman as anything other than a shallow vector for the channeling of masculine desire, because that’s all a woman could ever aspire to be.
THEORY THE SECOND. Such adverts are made by men and/or women who understand that the most effective kind of advertising feeds off a neurotic self-hatred in the consumer. That there is no customer so willing — so grievously grateful — as that customer who has been persuaded that without the LATEST, GREATEST, ANTI-WRINKLIEST tub of cocoa-butter infused dolphin blubber, they will simply cease to exist.
Pick your favourite. Here come the girls.
Actually, such adverts are made by men and/or women who understand that the most effective kind of advertising feeds off a neurotic self-hatred in the consumer. That there is no customer so willing — so grievously grateful — as that customer who has been persuaded/bullied into believing that men view women with simple and straightforward contempt. That for men, women exist in no realm other than the purely functional: for cooking, for fucking, for looking pretty on the arm. It would therefore be impossible to conceive of an advert that might represent or attempt to comprehend a woman as anything other than a shallow vector for the channeling of masculine desire, because that’s all a woman could ever aspire to be.
Yes, the truth is EVEN WORSE than you can imagine.
More violence—upon bodies, minds, and souls—here.
