Featured on the Huffington Post
By Jehmu Greene and Shelby Knox
Though the New Orleans Saints’ decisive victory left little room for Monday morning quarterbacking, the same cannot be said about the Super Bowl ads. CBS and its advertisers served up enough offensive fare to give everyone with an opinion an opportunity to take a swing – and they’re not holding back.
Amanda Hess at Washington City Paper took a turn explaining why Super Bowl ads are the way they are. Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon has a witty play-by-play of what she’s termed the Misogyny Bowl. Feministe takes Madison Avenue ad firms to task for forgetting it’s no longer the era of Mad Men.
And just because there will never be too much analysis of sexism, here’s the Women’s Media Center’s take:
$2.8 million – How much Focus on the Family paid CBS to attempt to pull the wool over America’s eyes. As expected, the benign ad featuring Tebow and his mom tried to hide Focus on the Family’s intolerant and divisive agenda. That the ad was ‘co-produced’ by CBS should be seen as a serious referendum on the status of women in the media.
5 henpecked, long suffering husbands. Before last night, I never really understood how horrible and unfair it must be to be a man. Having a job. Dressing oneself and taking out the recycling. Practicing basic human hygiene. A devastating existence made more trying by the presence of a demanding, overbearing woman. You might even have to carry her lip balm. The horror. Luckily for all the desperate men out there, Chrysler, Dove, and FLOTV produced spots on how to buy back your manhood. Buy a car. Buy some soap. Get a miniature TV. Never have to put down the toilet seat ever again.
$1200 – price of 4 Bridgestone hot rod tires. The official tire company of the NFL served up a particularly disturbing version of male devotion to their automobiles. In this ad, a faceless driver tosses his wife out of the car and into the clutches of a waiting evil villain rather than surrender his tires. Simple math: if the tires are worth $1200, how much is this wet, abandoned woman to whom he’s supposedly pledged his life worth? $1000? $800? Shameful.
2 older women sacked by big, bulky football players. In what kind of culture do we live when slamming an older women into the ground makes an appearance in not one but two commercials? Snickers rags on older people by comparing lagging players to Betty White and Abe Vigoda and then slamming them into the ground. The Focus on the Family ad tried a strange stab at humor when Tim Tebow sacked his own mother. Not funny, just unsettling.
20+ pasty office drones in their tighty whities. Even though it had the uncomfortable effect of forcing you to imagine your office mates naked, the careerbuilder.com ad was one of the few that managed to show skin without imposing sexual or homophobic tension. In fact, its’ representation of real people with real bodies was a refreshing departure from the white, All-American boys and girls from central casting.
1 woman in a bath tub. Megan Fox referenced the sexting craze from her bubble bath, wondering aloud what would happen if she sent a nude pic flying around the web. The sexism goes both ways here, as Motorola assumes men lose all self-control and common sense in the face of a suggestive picture.
26. The number of laps Danica Patrick led the year she placed third at the Indianapolis 500, becoming the first woman to ever place in the top three. That she is such a successful sportswoman in a field dominated by men makes it even more frustrating to see her reduced to the GoDaddy.com logo across her breasts year after year. Even though GoDaddy.com sponsors her race car, she’s never portrayed on the track. This year she’s trying to live her normal life – getting a massage and appearing on a talk show – but perky blonde women keep insisting on ripping their clothes off for her. Whether it’s some writer’s idea of a primetime lesbian fantasy or just more catnip to draw men to the soft porn commercials on their site, GoDaddy.com is once again one of the worst sexist ad offenders of the year.
1 Creepy Beaver – Attention Monster.com: Women aren’t born to be awarded as bikini-clad prizes to talented men OR semi-aquatic rodents. That is all.
30+ pantless dudes marching through a field. A continuation of the theme of the night: bemoaning existence as a male human being in a world of power hungry, castrating females. This ad brought to you by Dockers, the proud authors of the absurdly sexist and bizarre ‘Wear the Pants’ campaign that caused an outcry earlier this year. Add khaki pants to the list of things that will help men feel better about their penis size.
40 million – Estimated number of American women who tuned into the Super Bowl only to see themselves maligned, sexualized, objectified, and blamed for men’s problems big and small. CBS, the NFL, and the Super Bowl advertisers have demonstrated loud and clear whose dollars, choices, and words really matter. Here at the Women’s Media Center we are committed to holding the perpetrators of sexism and bias in the media accountable. Join us by signing up to monitor the media. Start by congratulating the winners of WMC’s first Super Bowl Ad Worst Sexism Offenders List:
FLOTV: Bill Stone, CEO – (858) 651-4268
Focus on the Family – Jim Daly, President – (719) 531-3400
Dodge Charger – Gualberto Ranieri Senior Vice President, Chrysler – (847) 778-4162
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11 Comments
I simply had to comment after reading your information regarding the Pam Tebow ad. You portray it as an anti-choice ad then go on to call for help in banning the ad. After watching the ad, there was nothing that spoke remotely about limiting choices, it was just a tease to bring people to their website. Your directives on your website however, call for limiting people’s access to ideas; thus limiting choice. Do not declare someone else anti-choice in one sentence and the seek to limit people’s choices within the same paragraph. Even those who aren’t looking can see the double standard here.
Are you really so dumb as to think the ad’s where the old people were “slammed” into the ground are real?
I’d certainly hope that someone who can construct a sentence would know how Television works.
I would hope you know how a show is made.
But since it seems you don’t, I’ll go ahead and tell you.
They’re fake. They didn’t _really_ get slammed into the ground. Dolls or other effects were used in order to make it look as if they _did_ slam them into the ground, but rest assured, poor old Betty White was unharmed.
Also, she obviously had no issue doing the commercial, after all, she was in it.
Come on, people, stop being whiny, dripping, vagina’s. They’re just commercials. It’s just TV. What has TV been doing all along? Sexism and sex sells. Get over it or turn off the damn TV.
/sick of my own damn gender.
I just wanted to thank J. Greene for standing up for the rights of women so fervently. I wish there were more women like you speaking out loudly about the extremely important matters in our world today. I honestly didn’t know anything about you until I saw you at the forefront of the battle against CBS and the Tebow, anti-abortion, add. Now I consider you essential to the growth of our country in the areas of gender, social-economics and politics. You helped stir the media with questions over the sneaky Focus On The Family agenda and caused those who were ignorant to the ways of the Conservative Right to see just how hard they try to impose their ways on everyone and take away our rights to do what we believe is right for ourselves. You rallied thousands of women and forward thinking people against CBS and FOTF. Your voices were heard loud and clear. In fact if it weren’t for you I don’t think anyone would have known about the commercial at all. You caused so much media coverage and debate over the add that not a single person in the US, and many worldwide, didn’t know about Tim Tebow’s story. I started to think that FOTF was paying you. They could not have bought better publicity. The 20.5M they paid CBS and the cost of making the add were peanuts! And after seeing the add I believe it was so, in your words, benign that it wouldn’t have been so much as a blip in the Super Bowl. No one would have known what the add was for or would have cared. An extremely small portion (of the people who were paying attention) would have actually visited the FOTF web site. FOTF did such a poor job ’shoving it down our throats’ the Pro-life community is complaining. Everyone thought it would be this huge Pro-life anthem but in fact is was just a simple, harmless, forgettable add for FOTF. However, I see it in a different way. I saw FOTF’s true side: gentile, peaceful, non-imposing, kind, quiet and loving. I don’t know who came up with the idea that this was going to be an anti-abortion add when no one but CBS saw it, but I thank them and I thank you. We will continue to need you in the future to help expand our dollars in ways we never thought possible. You were used for good, you just didn’t know it.
P.S. Forgive me for being angry with you days back when this all started. When I stood back and saw what was happening I was excited. Maybe you saw things in a different way too.
maybe the worse article I’ve ever read..what a bunch of liberal pansies. Get a life, lady! If you don’t like it, Turn the freakin’ channel! It’s amazing how liberals want American freedom until it backfires. Wow! What a pathetic bunch of losers you are.
It is a shame that a website devoted to advancing the cause of women makes such stupid, assinine comments which make all women appear to be vapid, militant, and intellectually challenged. I can only surmise that you are jealous of the fact that they can afford air space while this pathetic web site is only supported by male-hating, family-destroying malcontents. I am a proud Lesbian feminist that finds your comments a total embarrassment .
No wonder humans are on their way to extinction. The ignorance, insensitivity and lack of ethics is astonishing. To hide behind the facade of patriotism and the family in order to push back society into a obsolete patriarchal vision of the world is extremely detrimental. The legacy of the five thousand year long dominator model of society has been continuous war, slavery, genocide and now the destruction of the ecosystem. We don’t need more of that.
Obviously what we see on TV, movies, video games, etc. is fabricated, but the reason corporations spend so much money on them is because it affects viewers psychologically, stimulating mirror neurons and “literally” wiring the brain. Corporations have also paid scientists a lot of money to help them understand how the mind works in order to influence it.
Football is a parody of man’s futile endeavors. It seems the senile ape will triumph at the end in an armageddon of his own creation.
I am just shocked at your objection to the Pam Tebow ad. That ad was sweet and funny. There was nothing about it that was objectionable. I envy the obvious warm loving relationship she has with her son. This website does more harm for women than good. Get a life. You must desperately need attention when you stoop to spouting such rubbish. If you want to do some good then start pushing contraception. There is no excuse for a woman to have an unwanted baby in this day and age unless she has been raped. TV audiences are laughing at your group. What a bunch of frustrated females.
Watching Shelby Knox make her incredulous claims on Fox regarding the Tebow bit during the Super Bowl just made me think how desperate the WMC must be to appear relevant to their membership. After throwing my Bud Lite at the TV, I raced over to the CarMax, bought myself a Dodge Ram Charger, then raced over to my mom’s place where I ran her over. Good grief, people! Don’t you have something of significance to offer? Your comments are so unfounded and divisive that every male in the country probably began searching for their respective spine(FloTV)!
I thought it was a funny article about sexism in ads. I am quite surpised by the number of people who took the time to write such nasty comments about it. To all those stating that we should just “turn it off” I’ll toss it back to you- if you aren’t interested in reading a feminist perspective on the news- what are you doing reading articles on the Women’s Media Center website? Additionally this year’s Superbowl was not just another sporting event but the most watched program in history so it is certainly worth analyzing and debating the messages it sent. Thank you for posting this WMC!
I found it rather sad that you would take such offense at the Tebow ad campaign. If more young boys grew up under the wings of such a gracious lady as Pam Tebow, I think that this world would be a much better place for our young ladies. I am thankful that she was willing to be so courageous to allow her son to grow up to be such a caring son.
I can not believe that people think Ms. Teabow was slammed by her son. All involved mothers know that you play with your son to help him advance in sports. She was ok with it and it should be her choice just as it was her choice to not abort, of which is a woman’s choice. We have that right to choose and just as we have the right to choose what church we attned what political party we support, what dr. we go to, and if we choose to send our children to public or private school. Come on we live in America of which was inteneded to be a free country, but women like you are creating an America of can’t pray in school, can’t say Merry Christmas etc.. to hell with being politically correct. Take back America, speak english, say prayers in school, Say Merry Christmas, don’t put a freaking cup of hot coffee between your legs while you are driving. Lighten up we don’t need everyone policing what we say, eat, drink, we are smart enough to figure it out.