Too Pretty To Do Homework? So should I give this M.A. back now?

I saw this on The Consumerist today and just had to share.  The lovely commenters at The Consumerist have already filled in their "You're Making Too Big a Deal of This" square on their bingo cards.  Yes, it's just an ugly shirt that is ending up in the clearance rack behind all the stretched out sweaters and jeggings, but, as had been pointed out time and time again, it's not the actual item that is the problem, it's the underlying assumptions that the item promotes.

JC Penny has already yanked the shirt, so don't bother trying to buy one to be ironic (you hipster, you).  Irony doesn't make this message ok, by the way.  Susan Douglas points it out best in Enlightened Sexism: "For media-savvy youth, bombarded their entire lives by almost every marketing ploy in the book, irony means that you can look as if you are absolutely not seduced by the mass media, while then being seduced by the media, while wearing a knowing smirk."  Sure, you know it's stupid and you laugh at it and no one takes it seriously.  But it's still there, still stupid and still representing an undercurrent of thought.

I say the first part isn't the part people should get up in arms about; I was more pissed about the second part. First of all, no one I went to school with would ever risk their grades by letting any sibling, regardless of gender, get their grubby little paws on it.  Second of all, does any one else get a creepy, incest-y vibe?  Like she's so pretty she's able to seduce her blood relative to do her bidding?  And it's all the creepier because she's age 7-16?

Frankly, this shirt doesn't represent one guy in a back room who needs therapy.  Many people had to approve, design, promote and sell this image, so it seems like quite a lot of people thought it was ok.  Maybe they all need therapy.  They're definitely color blind, at least.

I close with the best response I could think of at the time, which I shared on Consumerist with great pride.  Take it, P!nk:

The Soap Lobby is an actual Thing?

And apparently, they want you to be afraid, very afraid, of the dirt and germs lurking in your house THIS VERY MINUTE.

Ok, this is old news. Also, that toilet looked pretty clean to me. What's interesting is that they are doing their best to obscure the effects of triclosan, the chemical in antibacterial soap that's supposed to kill 99.9% (that last .1% is super tricky, apparently) of all germs, despite mounting evidence that it doesn't actually help make you any cleaner and is damaging to the environment. Ok, that's kind of old news too.

Now, what I found really interesting as I did the research, a.k.a. going to the Dial soap website and checking their marketing angle, is that the soap that once touted itself as the "#1 recommended by doctors and hospitals" is now focusing on its...moisturizing properties...huh.

True, it still banks on that old standard, the "clean you can trust," like an old family friend who remembers you from when you were knee-high to a grasshopper. However, even this old, gold friend is changing its tune, touting itself as "Enriched with moisturizer, this refreshingly scented liquid removes dirt and germs and rinses clean" on the product page. In fact, most of the products on the corporate website are focusing on moisturizing and scent. Evidently, no men want to be clean or care about killing bacteria. The picture on the FAQ is a mom with a baby, after all, evidently the only people that use soap. That or Dial is a super progressive company that believes all genders should smell like verbena and olive oil (am I the only one who wants a salad now?).

I like to think that popular opinion and uproar about triclosan have spurred this sudden change in tune. Though, I will note that the company isn't tackling the subject head-on; triclosan isn't even mentioned on their FAQ. Which makes me think that maybe there's something to this whole 'consumer power' thing, causing the soap lobby (the nicest-smelling politicians on Capitol Hill, I'll have you know) to change their strategy, if not their actual product.

UPDATE: Kiera Butler over at MotherJones posted a follow-up to her original article, highlighting some of the lovely rhetoric to come out of the far right. My favorite: "Maybe environmentalists thought women would be too busy to notice the growing regulatory assault on them. They were wrong. Nothing gets women’s attention more quickly than dirty dishes, clogged toilets, grimy clothes, toxic materials, and budget-busting energy prices. It’s time the fairer sex took environmental Neanderthals head-on."

Yea, all women define themselves via their dishes, toilets and clothes. How forward-thinking of you. Damn those neanderthals, etc. You know, if you're going to misappropriate another movement's rhetoric, at least do it in a clever, not brain-dead way.

If (newspaper) Smart is the new Sexy....

...then God help all us ugly dullards who read and write blogs.  What can only be described as an advertising idea session that got out of hand, the Newspaper Association of America  has released a new ad campaign to try to appeal to the young folk.  Unfortunately, it's painfully obvious that young folk had nothing to do with creating the campaign.

Jeff Fleming over at Editor & Publisher already has a great article taking the ads apart one by one, so I won't repeat what he said.  However, I wanted to point out my favorite ad, which proves that sexism doesn't just strike us lady types:

Penis-vertising (ok, I can't make that any more elegant, but I'm open to suggestions!) is almost impossible to do well or with any shred of class.  Male anatomy is very often used for comedy, and the puns are infinite.  However, this one is interesting because it not only implies that size matters, but it also associates being "sexy" with having a huge...intellect.  I can't even imagine the pitch on this one; I feel like someone checked their email, read the usual "Please your Womman Today$" spam, went, "aha!" and grabbed a pen.

What I'm also not sure of is the target audience.  Not that I really know the target audience of any male enhancement product, but I always assumed it was middle-aged, mid-life crisis types.  Aren't those the types who are already reading the paper?  They're called "digital immigrants" for a reason, you know.

So, good job NAA for your equal-opportunity objectification.  At the very least, you may get people talking. And for the record, the size of a man's intellect isn't important; it's how he uses it.

From Editor & Publisher