5 responses so far ↓

• 1 Lisa // Jan 25, 2008 at 8:47 pm

  Have nothing to say about the photo, but will say I love your headline!

• 2 Toastie // Jan 26, 2008 at 1:43 am

  (Ooh, you have the math quiz spam-protection, too. Much more fun than trying to read captchas).

  Aren’t most “women’s” magazines like Cosmo full of scantily-clad women, where the ads are aimed squarely at women?

  And, hey, maybe they are meaning for it to be used as a dildo/boob brush. It’s just hard for Wal-Mart to stock it if it’s labeled as such. There are entire states where it couldn’t be sold.

• 3 claire // Jan 26, 2008 at 7:35 pm

  I’ve read a few women’s magazines, but never Cosmo, so I don’t know if it is like or unlike other women’s mags. Certainly its cover girl strategy is unique. I suppose that if the target audience is women who aspire to look like men’s fantasy women, then ads like this targeted at straight women would make sense.

  But this was from I.D. (International Design) magazine. Ostensibily, this is a well-designed toothbrush, so design-savvy people would want to own one. I certainly don’t read the magazine for its oral hygiene tips. I suppose the woman in lingerie is beautiful and designers like to look at beauty, but again, this would be something that would appeal to a straight male audience’s conception of beauty. As a designer, reading a design magazine, I’d rather look at a close-up of a well-designed object, maybe even read some copy about how the toothbrush is designed. After all, design is supposed to be primarily about function, not decoration.

  I became sensitized to this issue when I was writing a column for a broadcasting industry magazine. It’s a male-dominated industry, and there were not many women writing about industry trends in digital effects. So I got to go to trade show booths and be handed literature by scantily-clad, off-duty showgirls in gold lame evening gowns. It didn’t reach the level of a “hostile environment,” but it was clear that the marketeers had never even considered that they were marketing to someone who was wearing a pink business suit and trying to be taken seriously for her knowledge of things like inverse kinematics and non-uniform rational b-splines, and was not going to get all giddy over the opportunity to be given a press kit by a demo dolly with big boobs.

• 4 Joseph H. Vilas // Jan 27, 2008 at 10:43 am

  How do you know the advertisement isn’t aimed at dykes who like femmes? More seriously, the ad is probably done by straight men for straight men w/o any thought, but I can easily imagine a similar ad with a man. Then it would look even more like he was holding a dildo, or a theoretical extension of his penis.

  At that point, I don’t think I’d know who the ad was directed at, but I’d prolly guess it was either directed at gay men or straight women.

  It’s hard not to sexualize stuff. I remember an ad several years ago — I think it was for a calvin klein fragrance for men — that had a man lying in a hammock with a small child lying on top of him. IIRC, the man appeared to be asleep, and maybe the child too. The man’s arms were to his sides; one was even touching the ground, so he was clearly not holding the child on top of him. Still, IMO, it looked pederastic (maybe that’s not a word, but I’m sure you get the idea). I had a long discussion with a photographer about it. She said she thought the photo was great in the way it did all these things to try to ensure that the two people didn’t look like they were engaged in anything sexual.

  OK, I just spent maybe 20 minutes with Google Images and other stuff to try to find the ad in question. I couldn’t find it, but now I’m horny as hell.

• 5 claire // Jan 27, 2008 at 10:09 pm

  I’m going with the “done by straight men for straight men w/o any thought” explanation.

  Although having some male 6-pack abs definitely changes the subtext. Interesting idea.

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