03 December, 2008

advent iii: doesn't every woman have a keg in her stomach?

Am I the only one disturbed by the new Heineken advertisement? The ad portrays an essentially mechanical woman as a dispenser of beer - opening the keg with graceful fingers - in a short dress and high heels with the particularly feminine finger-wave hairstyle. They seem to me to portray a particularly disturbing image of women as filling a role that is at once highly domestic and purely sexualised while being as obedient to commands as any creature can be: a machine.

The ad is clever, the CG is strong and the music catchy. It's effective advertising: it sticks in your head. But this just makes the image of woman it projects more disturbing. It's effectively categorising women as domestic and sexualised instead of doing it in a fashion we can easily forget.

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