Women Are Good For Providing Men With Beer
August 27, 2007
You know how much we didn’t like the first Heineken spot from Berlin Cameron United, so we didn’t bother to see the second in the series. Well, Bob Garfield over at AdAge did and we can’t disagree with his arguments about the commercial being 100% sexist. Also, keep in my mind that THIS GUY is one of the people responsible for the spot, so we’re not surprised that the entire commercial’s concept hinges on a woman’s uterus actually being a beer keg and that she can clone herself three times over for your pleasure.
AdRants also follows up by saying, “Fair enough but we wonder if women sometimes inadvertently play right into this girl-as-boy-toy perception…” Ah gawd. And here in lies the problem. It’s like asking which came first – the chicken (sexist advertising) or the egg (women falling for it and putting themselves out there naked on MySpace, Girl’s Gone Wild, etc.)?
The plight of young women today is one, which we’re not going to begin to try and unravel. It’s complicated certainly, but we do believe the industry could be doing a better job of considering women even if the product is geared towards men. Come on. That’s just business sense.
August 28, 2007 at 5:36 am
That’s not only sexist but really, really freaky.
August 28, 2007 at 3:16 pm
um, i’m a woman. i work in the industry. i like this ad and didn’t see anything offensive about it. but i don’t super analyze everything looking to be offended, either.
August 28, 2007 at 3:37 pm
My 15 year old daughter said the commerical was “freaky” and “frightening” and changed the channel – and I would have if she didn’t.
Hope the shows during which the commericial runs find out that the ladies are finding something else to watch because of it…
September 22, 2007 at 5:24 am
Looks like someone failed high school health class! The human uterus is lower than where you seem to think it is.
As a feminist, I find these false complaints of sexism particularly insidious. There are so many examples of authentically harmful sexism in ads that ought to be criticized. False alarms such as this amount to crying wolf and serve only to distract attention from genuinely sexist ads. Real women aren’t threatened by robots.
Boys like beer. Boys like pretty girls. Boys like Transformers. Heineken should do well with this ad.