claiming that women are vulgarised, commodified‚
and used as crude sex objects
It says ads too often show women
"in situations which are humiliating and degrading,
or even violent and offensive to human dignity"
"Experience Instant Gratification"
A new commercial for Eclipse Fusion Gum starts out with a young, attractive woman putting a piece of gum in her mouth.
Apparently driven mad with lust by the sensual qualities of spearmint, the woman proceeds to lock lips with the nearest male in the vicinity.
She then turns to the comely young woman sitting next to him, their eyes meet and the two exchange lascivious smiles.
The commercial ends there, thankfully, but the hint at porno-style "girl-on-girl" action remains.
The smooching among pop stars Madonna, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards took this theme to its logical conclusion. And teenagers have done the same.
Along with exhibiting a host of other hyper-sexualized behavior, teenage girls have now taken to making out with each other in order to impress guys. Such examples of "bisexual chic" have apparently taken root.
A recent commercial for the Internet search engine Ask.com heralds the emergence of sexual fetishes into mainstream culture.
Set against a Broadway-style musical number with the lead male singer backed by a chorus of dancing girls, the commercial seems fun and innocent on the surface.
But the theme behind it is the man's online search for "chicks with swords," which, according to the commercial, brings up a number of S-M (that's sadomasochism, for those who don't live in San Francisco) Web sites.
The musical number revolves around him singing triumphantly, "I got what I want!" while women carrying swords and dressed in bondage fetish wear form a chorus line, singing sweetly, "He got what he's looking for."
Meanwhile, clips from various bondage sites flash on large screens in the background. At the very end, the logo "Experience Instant Gratification" flashes on the screen.
In France, ads for everything
from chocolate bars to furniture polish
employ naked flesh with excited abandon
In the days when admen were men, and women made the tea, there was a popular advertising genre known as "two Cs and a K."
It was shorthand for the way women were used in ads and you'll have seen it in commercials hundreds of times.
Two women (the two "C"s, or rather two cunts) stand in a kitchen (the "K") fretting about how to clean the floor/feed the family/wash whiter for a fiver.
It's a formula still used by some brands today, though you'd be hard pushed to find anyone who'd dare employ that old, offensive shorthand.
The ad-land lexicon has definitely become more PC since the "two Cs in a K" days. But according to a new report from the European Council the industry's portrayal of women remains stuck in the Dark Ages.
The Council has just blasted the use of women in ads around Europe, claiming that women are vulgarised, commodified‚ and used as crude sex objects.
It says ads too often show women "in situations which are humiliating and degrading, or even violent and offensive to human dignity."
Pretty strong stuff. So I tried to think of some ads that degrade and humiliate my sex, ads that are violent, offensive. It's not easy. In fact, though there are plenty of offensive ads, their crime tends to be an absence of quality rather than an absence of equality.
Of course, sex sells, no question. So there are plenty of ads that use sexy imagery to get our consumption glands dribbling.
Take Lynx. Its ads revel in heaving cleavages and near-naked women portrayed as objects of sexual desire. Are they offensive? Probably to some.
But they're funny, knowing and generally leave you with the distinct impression that women really have the upper hand. And I can think of a lot of ads that treat men as sex objects:
Diet Coke Man recently made a return to our TV screens, all bare chest, rippling six-pack and ogling female fans.
And it's not much help to turn to the report itself for specific examples: it doesn't give many.
It does cite a Dolce & Gabbana ad with a woman being pinned down "in a position which suggests rape is intended", an example, the report says, of porn-chic, using fantasies of female sexuality to sell luxury goods.
Is the European Council's report a gross overreaction, then? Not necessarily.
It's worth pointing out that the report is looking at women in ads across Europe, not just the carefully self-regulated and PC-sensitive UK, where a hint of areola in a shower commercial is a close as we get to nudity.
Unlike France, where ads for everything from chocolate bars to furniture polish employ naked flesh with excited abandon.
The truth is that ad agencies here are world leaders in the art of understanding consumers, so perhaps it's not surprising that UK advertising is relatively sophisticated in its depiction of women.
According to a new book about marketing to females, Inside Her Pretty Little Head, women are driven by a utopian impulse based around harmony, security, naturalness and, yes, femininity.
Think Cath Kidston, Innocent, M&S. No room here for vulgar, violent and offensive imagery if you want to make a sale.
So the UK holds up pretty well on the question of women in advertising. But it's hard to argue against the Council's concerns about the use of unrealistic female role models in ads (thin, beautiful) and its proposal to make "incitement to discrimination an offence in advertising media".
The intentions are good, they're just wide open to abuse of interpretation.
The last thing British advertising needs is more interference from a nannying European bureaucracy, and any threat to advertising freedoms must be fiercely fought.
But the industry will only be able to head off such threats if it's seen to act fairly and responsibly in its portrayal of women... and men.
