This shit is bananas.
Criticizing hypersexual commercials for fashion and/or beauty products seems both quaint and quixotic: the entire marketing endeavour is premised on titillation and endorphin production by proxy... but come on.
Really, Gwen? Really?
"I Want You All Over Me" &mdash indeed.
posted by Labris @ 12:49 a.m.
2 Comments:
At 10:59 p.m.,
Pacanukeha said…
I'm not getting it. Perhaps I am over-exposed? What is particularly lascivious about those pics? The posing and composition don't look too bad. I mean, sure, some blonde Marilyn look-alike, but it's perfume.
Is there some subtle or not so subtle thing I am missing?
At 9:44 p.m.,
Labris said…
...
Dude, take a closer look: the first shot is a simulated blowjob and the second ("I Want You All Over Me") is a post-bukkake pose-down.
It bugs me not so much because it's head and shoulders beyond most ads in terms of the hypersexual imagery, but because it's a particularly submissive kind of female sexuality shown here. Plus &mdash and here's my real beef &mdash it's Gwen Stefani. A hugely popular pop-music artist who developed her success largely by trading on an athletic, aggressive girl-power image.
Granted she's never exactly been a feminist icon or anything, but she was a Debbie Harry-esque powerhouse, expressing sexual energy, control and a fierce independence. Even as she's evacuated more and more of these elements from her stage persona and music videos (as she's enjoyed increasing mainstream success), she's replaced them with a certain kind of post-Madonna "doing my own thing, my own way" kind of vibe.
This kind of ad totally undermines so much of that carefully-constructed identity and reduces her image to just one more manufactured blond jizz target.
Finally, I realize that in an ocean of misogyny, degradation and sexual reductionism, this ad is just one more drop of foul water. It still really bugged me.
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