Today I was planning to write about my final week in Turkey before heading to my next destination. However, in light of the recent news both in Turkey and in the UK. I don’t feel comfortable just shrug it off and ignore the rape culture in ads we are very much dealing with today. When your business is shaping people’s mind and tapping into their desires and selling them products and services we have long ago crossed any ethical lines. We have exchanged our morals for money and have been promoting rape culture in every aspect of our lives through various media formats. For the sake of staying on point I will focus only on certain media formats in this post but this problem branches soo deep it kind of hurts my head. The problem is not singular, hence the solution is not singular either but let’s start somewhere.
What is rape culture?
Rape culture is a sociological concept for a setting in which rape is pervasive and normalized due to societal attitudes about gender and sexuality. Behaviours commonly associated with victim-blaming, slut-shaming, sexual objectification, trivializing rape, denial of widespread rape, refusing to acknowledge the harm caused by sexual violence or some combination of these. It has been used to describe and explain behaviour within social groups, including prison rape and in conflict areas where war rape is used as psychological warfare. Entire societies have been alleged to be rape cultures. It is associated with rape fantasy and rape pornography.
The notion of rape culture was developed by second-wave feminists, primarily in the United States, beginning in the 1970s. Critics of the concept dispute its existence or extent, arguing that the concept is too narrow or that, although there are cultures where rape is pervasive, the idea of rape culture can imply that the rapist is not at fault but rather the society that enables rape. Then change the fucking culture and punish the deed, by implying the rapist is not at fault you are already victimizing the rapist as opposed to the actual victim. Like what the freaking fuck??
Many movements have addressed rape culture, such as SlutWalk and Me Too. These movements have helped share people’s stories through hashtags that are embodied and connected to rape
Sexism and objectification
Rape culture in ads is very much embedded in how we run our businesses, the ads, movies even milk packages. It runs deep and whenever another story comes up in lines of “drunk women raped when walking home” I cringe with that heading. The suggestion that her being drunk and late walking at home is somehow a justification of what has happened. This goes back to how men, society is sexist towards women. The patriarchy plays a role here, the upbringing, the education every little fibre plays a role in forming the mind of well.. a rapist. So when the time is ripe and you got your own cash to spend and companies are hunting for your attention, your desires, what you want. They already have a pretty damn good idea of what they have to do. In movies, ads and marketing the easiest way to sell is through sex. And what better way for these assholes than to subliminal shooting you with images that not only reaffirm sexism and objectification of women than through half-naked ladies doing their bidding?
Untastefull examples
So I gathered a small collection of quite untasteful prime examples of sexists and rape culture promoting ads.
Hope you had a bucket next to you when going through the pictures. I didn’t even put up the worst ones, just google it and you will find it quite easily. Matter of fact it took me longer to find a neutral add where both genders were being displayed in a normal way.
Apparently, it’s not impossible to create an ad that can sell but at the same time not promote sexism or rape culture, shocking I know!.
Evolution
Soooo now what? I mean where the heck should I start with pointing fingers?… The companies want to sell products, they look at marketing agencies. Marketing agencies do market research and come with potential sales pitches and what “men” want or how they want their brand to be associated with. They want their beverage to be associated with “fun” “sex” “relaxation”. The same goes with the fragrance, you want to feel more “confident” “sexy” and “desirable” when wearing it. So how would you display such features? you look at the society and adjust your playbook to that. If we look at some ads from the 50ties they are really unacceptable today, an clear example of rape culture in ads.
Chicken or the egg?
Well actually both to be honest. Society dictates what it wants but the media amplifies this in either direction and has an important role to play here. In the example of the Ford car, this is a clear missed opportunity to go a different direction in portraying how spacious the car is and they went with stuffing 3 women in the backseat abduction style. Some things are harder to get rid of but certainly not impossible. Men desire women and vice versa, it is the easiest way to sell a product which “promises” you the notion of you getting what you desire by buying their product. Because that what you desire will make you happy…you hope and the product says so! so it must be so…
Now we are diving into more a psychological chapter where we have to first redefine gender roles, what we perceive as happiness, reshape that and sell that reshaped model as happiness. So in the 50ties, smoking cigarette was mostly promoted as being manly, sexy and even promoted in the movies as the best thing to do after sex. You would often see this put in scenes and people started associating with it and voila… 50 years later, people are still doing it (much less thankgod).
So who bears the responsibility? The companies? the people? the agencies?. They all have their role in it! The same people running the companies, signing off on the adds are the same people with children at home, being dads and mums, watching the same movies and shows and being also influenced by this vicious cycle that is hard to break from. But it is something we have to keep doing as a society. The same way ads of the 50ties are unacceptable because the mindset of the 50ties is unacceptable. So should we work hard to make the ads of today and the society of today unacceptable in the future!
Where do I stand on this?
It’s a difficult question because I too have been conditioned in the same environment to associate certain things and lifestyle with desirability and happiness. So I have to first undo those brainwashing but at the same time be conscious of it. Even if I undo mine, my clients and their customers might still very much be conditioned to believe otherwise. This puts me in a rather tight spot in finding and adjusting the way I educate not only my clients but also their customers in a subtle way. So I try to steer them away from those conditioned and toxic mindset and introduce them to new and healthier association with a brand which actually makes them happy.
Some examples
- The Ford car with regards to the spaciousness of it, you could easily replace the women with something more neutral like 20 bags of groceries and remove the guy to make it genderneutral at the same time.
- Products like “dead girls can’t say no” is just not done, get rid of that kind of bullshit
- Any association of alcohol with seducing a woman or forcing a woman into sex is also not done, come on obvious. Alcohol companies always try to associate their product with sex, party, fun, letting go lifestyle, partying. One way to solve this is to take away the factor of sex in the advertisement for this. You can still show and promote your product as being fun to drink and enjoy in natural settings or even positive settings like let’s say a picture of a family bbq and some beers everyone is sharing. I am not going into the discussion with you that drinking alcohol, in general, is not the best idea. Or to promote it in a family setting. but we are at least 100 years away from that reality I think
- Fragrances have it much easier in reshaping why you should purchase their products because you can convey any message. You can say you will feel much better, you will be more fun to be around because you don’t stink. But easiest is again here to tap into the human’s primal instinct which is to have sex, to make yourself desirable. Some fragrances even try to replicate feromone kind of smells to actually create some real attraction between the genders. This one is a hard one because it is embedded in our DNA. BUT we can still be responsible for how we portray this and in a consensual way. So let’s say the D&G ad could easily be: “A smell so good, it breaks the ice” with the women in neutral clothing complimenting the guy on the fragrance he is wearing. This way you are still promoting some laws of attractions but not in a sexist way. You are even adjusting some of the stereotypical gender roles. Sure it is way more “boring” than 5 half-naked women surrounding you, and it would attract less attention… but is at least responsible.
Conclusion
One word… AWARENESS… I just hope you became a bit more aware today than you were yesterday. I hope you start seeing more and more of these signals and be conscious of them, and subliminally you learn and teach this to anyone you come into contact with. 1 step at a time, the change will come. Change is inevitable, in what direction though is something we as a society carry responsibility..each..and…every..one..of …us.