Friday, July 22, 2011

"Sexist" milk advert?



We read:
"A Cheeky advertising campaign touting milk as a tonic for PMS has come under fire from critics who say the claim is scientifically dubious and sexist.

The US milk processor behind the famous "Got milk?" ad campaign has launched the Everything I Do Is Wrong, website as "Your Home for PMS Management". It includes a picture of a worried man holding several milk cartons with the headline "I apologise for letting you misinterpret what I was saying."

A flurry of fury has followed, labelling the strategy sexist.

"Reducing us to hormonal female psychopaths is no way to get us to drink milk. In fact, that makes me want to rip the milk out of your hands and shove it up your hole,” wrote one [obviously hormonal] critic.

"It seems beneath us to even point out how dumb and sexist it is. But yes. It is both," another wrote.

And the use of a 2005 study that shows calcium may improve PMS symptoms as a selling point for milk has come into question. "Taking calcium probably does help overall ... but it may not help everyone, and for some people it does help it may not help much," a Time magazine report noted.

Source

Some people can't take a joke, I guess. But if we are to take it seriously, I think it is sexist by being anti-men. It portrays men as wimps utterly terrified by their wife's moods.

4 comments:

Brian from Virginia said...

' "Reducing us to hormonal female psychopaths is no way to get us to drink milk. In fact, that makes me want to rip the milk out of your hands and shove it up your hole,” wrote one [obviously hormonal] critic. '

Yeah, that's a completely rational reaction from a level headed individual. ;)

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with the first sentence. But the second sentence kinda proves the point of the commercial. Even though most people (at least without a chip the size of an aircraft carrier on their shoulders) understand that the ad is meant to be tongue in cheek.

Anonymous said...

Straight men would have an easier life living with another guy than a woman, and just meet women for "dates" when the female is on her best behavior.

stinky said...

It sure is easy to get free publicity these days.

Use the Name, Luke said...

This ad plays off of things universally recognized as true. Especially that men and women can use the same words, but mean different things.

Woman: "I don't have anything to wear."
Meaning: "I don't have anything new to wear."

Man: "I don't have anything to wear."
Meaning: "I don't have anything clean to wear, because I left them in a dirty pile on the floor."

"Humour plays close to the big, hot fire, which is the truth, and the reader feels the heat."
- E. B. White