In their advertising text, Burger King does away with any attempt to throw in the usual cunning, subtle remarks and instead goes with this:

“Fill your desire for something long, juicy and flame-grilled with the NEW BK SUPER SEVEN INCHER. Yearn for more after you taste the mind-blowing burger that comes with a single beef patty, topped with American cheese, crispy onions and the A1 Thick and Hearty Steak Sauce.”

I’m not sure whether it’s even worth picking apart at the details of this text because the sexist imagery is so shamelessly vulgar I’m tempted to think the BK masterminds created it to be that way, if only to stir up controversy that will really have everyone talking. Otherwise, Burger King needs to hire a new employee for their Sexual Nuance Conceptualizer position, because the language sounds like something a 13-year-old boy might say while harassing a female classmate about his own long and juicy member blowing her mind. BK doesn’t even attempt to mask the sexual positioning of their female model, instead caking on her makeup in a way that makes me imagine her dressed as Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. I’m not even sure if the word “blow” is meant to further emphasize the obvious sexual act going on here, or if BK is gloating about the blow-up sex doll they’ve created out of their model for this advertisement. Thoughts?

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One campaign I am particularly interested in is the Dove campaign for “real beauty,” which annoys me for a number of reasons. Beyond the obvious hypocrisy of such a message when coming from a company that sells beauty products, I question what exactly they mean by “real beauty” or “real women,” which is what the claim to feature in their ads. The idea of a “real woman” seems to suggest that some women are not real, either because they are famous or because they conform to current societal standards of beauty by embracing the ever so coveted protruding hipbone look. Despite the negative attitude they promote towards the skinny standard, they don’t seem to promote women of very many sizes. All of these women look to be within close range of one another in terms of weight. Furthermore, the thinnest woman in the picture is the only woman pictured from straight ahead without another woman covering part of her body or some sort of pose cleverly manipulated to accentuate her curves while simultaneously masking the size of her thighs. None of the women are significantly overweight to begin with, nor are any of them underweight.

This image also mirrors a lot of the problematic phrases constantly used to promote healthier body images among women, as most of them simply present a different idea of what the standard should be. “Real women have curves” doesn’t say to me that women come in all shapes in sizes and should be proud of their natural shape; on the contrary, it suggests that all women are beautiful so long as they aren’t too thin. I’m not sure how much better that is than the expectation that all women share Barbie’s measurements — the reality is that some women are naturally thin. Some of us are never going to have hips and large breasts. Society might tell me I’m not a Real Woman because my ribs don’t show quite enough, but now Dove is telling me that I’m not a real Woman because I need to gain 30 pounds.

In terms of race, this ad is also very interesting. They at first appear to present a range of colours; it is strange, though, that despite the fact that women of colour have a wider variety in skin tone, there are four different shades of white in this picture. Of the two women of colour, neither one is particularly dark-skinned, and the woman all the way to the left is hardly a shade darker than the woman to her right. The woman closest to the center of the image, besides being the thinnest, is also the lightest and only blonde. In addition to that, all Real Women appear to have perfectly white, straight teeth and glowing skin. They may also belong to the anti-cellulite campaign that Margaret mentioned, but that’s an assumption on my part…

The Dove campaign reminds me of Nike’s “If You Let Me Play” commercials from the mid-90s, which I first read critiques of in my psychology class with Dean Schuster last year (Psych 421: Intersections of Sport & Sexuality). Those commercials seem to have been received very well by the general public, getting a lot of praise for promoting women in sports, but its underlying subtext promotes a very different message rooted in notions of white male dominance. Besides the audacity that these girls are asking for permission to play rather than implying they should be “allowed” to play by default, the vulnerable-looking girls Nike chooses to feature present an interesting image of girls in America, with the white girls receiving significantly more airtime and filling the most prominent sections of the commercial. An article I read in that class by Shelley Lucas goes into much further detail, but I don’t want to stray too far from the topic of advertising and photography. What it comes down to is the fact that in these ads, Nike is trying to inconspicuously promote their company and products by presenting a message that will be well-received in a more modern America, but its hypocritical use of certain prejudices and biases to appeal to the American public reveal the truth behind their motives.

In the end, advertising always has one goal: to reach to their demographic. As our morals change as a society, advertising will change to appeal to those morals, but it does not necessarily mean that the advertisers have suddenly embraced our cause or denounced the sexist and racist attitudes that still govern our country and society — those attitudes simply become more covert as these values slip out of our consciousness and take on less obvious and more institutionalized forms.

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Recently, there have been some horrendous sounds coming from the bathroom in my dormitory. A late night trip to the restroom revealed to me the source of this problem: speakers hooked up to an iPod belonging to someone whose iTunes library apparently contains nothing but rap music. After discovering this, I also realized that one particularly annoying song, which Google has informed me is called “Crank Dat Soulja Boy,” has become very popular not just in my bathroom, but everywhere. I can’t walk around campus or go to the mall or do much of anything without hearing people singing about cranking dat Supaman.

Despite the widespread popularity of this song, I had a difficult time deciphering the words. My Google search proved useless here, as after reading the lyrics, I still had no idea what the words actually meant. Never have I heard “Superman” in this context before. I thought Superman was just a fictional character, and I’m not sure when the word became a verb. At this point, I turned to Urban Dictionary to help me. What I’ve learned is that when you “superman dat hoe,” you ejaculate on a girl’s back and attach a sheet or blanket to her so that it sticks like a cape. Apparently, this is how to “put a bitch in her place” if she refuses sexual activity, which somehow makes her a “hoe.”

I’m slightly confused by this message. First of all, the song contains the words “soulja boy” in the title, which I’m told should be read as “soldier boy.” Does the rapper mean to imply that soldiers are sexist, horny bastards who have no respect for women? Or does he mean to give off a more respectable image by implying that his disgustingly sexist ideas make him a strong role model for boys? I’m also confused about the spelling of “soldier.” Since when is there a ‘j’ in there?

From the message of the song to the music itself, which sounds more like a lot of banging on loud instruments and screaming, this song comes across as very confusing to a listener like me. As I’ve explained, it took me a long time to hear, decipher, translate and understand the words, and I’m still having difficulty. If you’d please excuse my ignorance and answer some of these questions for me, I’d greatly appreciate it. Perhaps if you would also find some artists with a decent amount of talent and begin making music with a more understandable and respectable message, this confusion would happen less frequently. There was a time when music contained melody and soul, but it has deteriorated into what I can only describe as a mess of ignorant, money-hungry celebrities with no talent other than screaming or looking pretty who like to masquerade as musicians, defacing what many others love and respect dearly.

I hope you understand how unfortunate this problem is and that you will do your best to save the world from horrible music, as they are becoming more and more corrupted by the day. Yesterday I saw a 12-year-old girl preforming what has been dubbed the “soulja boy dance,” and I can only hope the poor soul will one day learn and have the chance to appreciate what real music is.

Sincerely,
Concerned listener

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