(here's the link to youtube)
Tell me what you think, because I read a blog post which claims that this commercial is full of sexism, and it made the author of the post really angry.
But I don't see it. I've watched the commercial, and it seems to be saying, "Hey, I'm an Olympic athlete and I'm awesome. But the pool water really damages my hair. So I use Pantene shampoo and it's awesome."
And the claim, in the aforementioned blog post, is that this commercial is saying, "Even if you're an Olympic athlete, as a woman you're still not good enough unless your hair is perfect and you fit this standard of beauty."
I think the context is really really important when determining if something is sexist/racist/etc. If the commercial was perpetuating a harmful sexist stereotype that already exists in the minds of its audience, then that would be bad and sexist.
But I don't think it is. Really, I don't. I don't see any problem.
During the Olympics, there has been a lot of talk in the land of feminist blogs (blogosphere? I have some doubts about whether it is, in fact, a sphere) about how the media is portraying the female athletes. And I agree that that criticism is valid- it IS dumb and sexist for the media to make a big deal about an athlete's weight or physical appearance, and to do this to woman athletes and not men. Like... they're athletes, they're the best in the world, and you really think it's valid to criticize their bodies? Really? Really?
But I stand by my statement that I don't see any harmful messages towards women in that commercial. I'm sure if I thought about it enough, I could come up with some convoluted message of sexism, but nothing was obvious when I first watched the commercial, so I think it's not worth analyzing in any more detail than that.
What do y'all think?