BREAKING NEWS: Purity Culture Adherents Completely Miss the Point

Lady Gaga performs at the Superbowl LI halftime show. Immodestly. I love it. Image source.

[content note: rape culture in superbowl commercials]

This article was posted on Desiring God two weeks ago: How Do You Super Bowl? Ideas for Navigating Controversial Ads. It's full of advice about how good Christians should deal with the issue of superbowl ads. "But wait," you ask, "what exactly is the problem? Why are superbowl ads a tricky thing that people need advice about?" Well. I'm glad you asked. Let's see how the article explains it:

But in recent years, an increasing number of those pricey commercials also have proven sexually suggestive, or worse. Ads by Victoria’s Secret and GoDaddy are notorious examples, not to mention the latest efforts by the major beer companies, or this year’s inevitable racy movie trailer.

So the problem is that the ads are "sexually suggestive." No details are given beyond that. Seriously. There's nothing in this entire article that tells us why it's bad for ads to be "sexually suggestive." What exactly is harmful about that?

Fortunately (heh) I grew up in purity culture, so I can fill in here. This is a type of Christianity that is very much afraid of "lust." If a man looks at a woman who's not his wife and feels sexual attraction, oh my goodness DANGER DANGER. Yes, sometimes they will say that sexual attraction is normal (well, only if it's the heterosexual kind, of course) and not a sin, but it can lead to lust, which is a sin- but everything is talked about in such vague terms that many people end up with the impression that their very normal, benign feelings of attraction are a dirty dirty sin. (For example: I'm asexual, I don't experience sexual attraction, but I TOTALLY considered myself to be "struggling with lust" many times during my years in purity land.)

Notice that I said "if a man looks at a woman"- this is very gendered. In this ideology, men are animals which can hardly control themselves, and women don't really have any sexual desire at all. Instead, women want attention from men. So the "danger" from an advertisement containing a photo of a sexy woman is that it will make men lust and make women think "I should dress like that so men will want me."

At any rate, anything that invites people to think about the desirability of sex, sexuality, or sexiness is an EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TEMPTATION. That's what that Desiring God article is about. That's the danger they are trying to help people avoid.

They totally missed the point.

The problem with superbowl commercials isn't that they acknowledge that sexiness exists. The problem is that they portray women and women's bodies as objects solely for men's enjoyment. Often in these commercials, women aren't fully human individuals who make their own choices; instead, they are the reward a man gets for being awesome. There was one particularly horrifying one I remember, which must have been 7 years ago but I remember it because it scared me that much: It was a commercial for potato chips or something, and every time the guy in the commercial took a bite of the chips, a lucky thing happened to him. One of the "lucky things" was a woman's clothes disappearing- she was walking down the street, and suddenly her clothes were gone and she was walking down the street in sexy underwear. And we the viewers are supposed to see this- a woman's clothes suddenly disappearing for no reason as she minds her own business- as a happy thing that happened to this guy who was eating the potato chips. We're supposed to see it as a good thing. We're not supposed to think about how the woman feels- she doesn't have her own feelings, she's only there to make the guy happy. OH MY GOD.

That scares me. That really scares me. It scares me that there are so many people who see no problem with that message- that commercial was approved to air during the superbowl, the biggest event for TV commercials. What if I was walking down the street and my clothes flew off? Would you think "WOW SO COOL!" or would you think "oh my god someone help her! Give her a coat!"

But the Desiring God article about the dangers of superbowl ads doesn't say anything about sexism at all. Not a word about how so many ads promote disgusting, dehumanizing messages about women. (Though in that ideology, if they said they were concerned about the messages it's sending about women, they would mean messages like "it's okay to wear sexy clothes." Again, they totally miss the point.)

They don't care what the commercial is actually about. They don't care whether it presents a healthy view of sexuality where everyone respects each other, or a view where women are public property and don't make their own choices about sex. In their way of thinking, all that matters is that the ad includes an image of a sexy woman. They don't look at how other people in the ad treat her; instead, it's the sexy woman herself who is intrinsically dangerous. Her body is dangerous, and good Christians must not look.

Must not look. That's right, all the "advice" in that Desiring God article is along the lines of "don't look." It's full of practical suggestions about changing the channel, muting during commercials, or skipping the superbowl altogether. Don't look. The sexy woman's body is so dangerous, you must not even look.

The most heartbreaking, horrifying part of the article is this:

We always have a jump channel set on the remote, so pushing one button changes to a ‘safe’ channel. We usually set it to some channel about food or houses or animals. The kids have seen enough commercials to know and will themselves say ‘jump.’ So they are aware and can discern, but we don’t leave it on to increase exposure

OH MY GOD, they trained their kids to say "jump."

I was under the impression that the concern about kids seeing sexual things on TV is that the kids are too young to understand. If they're too young to understand, then how can you teach them to recognize a commercial that they need to "jump" away from? I'll tell you how: you teach them to look for a woman wearing sexy clothes- that's the sign that a commercial is not safe. Do you see how messed-up this is? They're teaching their kids that the problem is the woman herself. The problem is her body, the existence of her cleavage. Not how the other characters in the commercial treat her.

I submit to you that a child cannot develop a healthy view of sexuality if they are trained in this way. Especially if that child is a girl (or assigned female at birth). What happens when she starts to grow up and she discovers that her own body has boobs and curves- those same dangerous things that she was taught to "jump" away from?

What happens when these kids meet an actual person who is "dressed immodestly", the kind of person they would "jump" away from if they saw them on TV? Are they going to be able to treat her like an actual human being, or just see her as a dangerous object they need to protect their pure hearts from?

Purity culture is so totally fixated on sex and sexiness that it's unable to even see the sexism and disrespect present in these ads. They're so focused on superficial things like showing skin that they can't comprehend the morals and messages in these ads, the difference between consent and sexual assault. Of course they miss the point. Of course they can't see it when their only advice is "don't look."

Women are Your Reward for Being Awesome!

I just watched the Superbowl and I gotta write this. The ads. Misogyny and objectification, as always. And it's freaking disgusting.

I'm not going to write about GoDaddy, because we all knew theirs was going to be over-the-top blatantly horribly disgusting misogyny. No, I want to point out one theme I saw in several of the ads: Women as rewards. The message is, "If you buy this product, you'll be awesome, and you can have a woman as your reward!"

Examples:

Axe: A (male) lifeguard rescues a woman who's swimming in the ocean. She looks up at him and is about to kiss him, but then she notices, in the distance, an astronaut! And she goes over to the astronaut instead. Buy Axe Apollo!

Mercedes Benz: Some wise-looking guy who's probably a famous actor I should know offers a guy "the car and everything that comes with it." Then we see a montage of this guy enjoying the car- including scenes of him driving around a bunch of girls and being chased by girls.

In other words, if you do good things- like save a swimmer's life or buy our product- you should of course be rewarded with attractive women.

(Oh, and obviously "you" are a straight guy. Everyone who watches football is a straight guy, right?)

This "women as rewards" theme is SO FREAKING COMMON in commercials that a lot of people probably don't even notice or realize what it's saying. Sometimes I don't even notice- I'm so used to these montages of "good" things that supposedly happen to someone who buys the product being advertised, and one of those "good" things is beautiful women wanting him.

That's not how it works, okay? No matter how awesome you are, NO ONE IS OBLIGATED TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU, or date you, or like you, or whatever. Certainly people who have more positive qualities will be more attractive to potential partners, but it's not some vending machine where you put in your awesomeness and a girlfriend automatically comes out.

Women are not dumb and shallow like that. Women are not a symbol of favorable events happening to someone. Women are PEOPLE- you know, like men are. And did you know women buy cars? Seems like none of the Superbowl advertisers knew that...

And how could I not mention THE WORST commercial I saw during the Superbowl? Okay, it's an Audi commercial where a boy is all dressed up to go to prom, with no date. He drives the Audi, and it gives him so much confidence that when he gets to prom, he goes right up to a pretty girl and kisses her before she can even realize what's going on. Then another boy (presumably her boyfriend) sees him, and it cuts to him driving home with a black eye, with a smile like "that was so worth it."

The message here, kids, is that Audi gives you the confidence you need to violate a woman's personal space and kiss her without her consent, as if her body is public property. As if beautiful women are a reward for those who have the guts to just go up and TAKE WHAT THEY WANT.

(And maybe this is a stretch, but it also kind of implied that the reason kissing her might cause some trouble is because she had a boyfriend- he's taking what belongs to another guy. Not because, you know, women have a right to their own bodies or anything.)

Disgusting. So disgusting. I repeat: No matter how awesome you are, you are not entitled to anyone's kisses. (For the feminists out there: SO MUCH RAPE CULTURE in this commercial.)

What if some guy came up behind me, held me down and kissed me, and felt like a TOTAL BADASS, instead of the colossal jerk he truly was? What kind of world do we live in, when a commercial like this can air on national television, and most people don't say a thing? I don't feel safe if there are people out there that would really think that was okay.

And one more thing: So, in the days following the Superbowl, a lot of people will be talking about how awful the objectification of women was in the commercials. And then a lot of other people will tell them to quit talking about it, that's just the way it is, because "sex sells", end of discussion.

To which I say this: Okay, it may be true that "sex sells." It may be true that portraying half of the human population as objects that exist only for men's entertainment, whose only use is in their sexuality, somehow causes people to buy more of whatever you're selling.

But if that's true, something is terribly terribly wrong with our society.

And as a feminist, I have more respect for men than that. I believe that change can happen, that our culture can move toward equality and justice, that this is not an unchangeable "just the way it is."

When you say "sex sells" and dismiss my argument, you're saying that it's unreasonable to expect men to treat women as people instead of objects. You're saying that men can never learn to respect women, that our culture will never change. As a feminist, I believe that there are a lot of men out there who really do respect women. This is NOT some unreasonable standard, this is BASIC HUMAN DECENCY.

And it is ONLY in feminism that I have encountered this idea that "no, men ARE capable of respecting women and treating them as FULL HUMAN BEINGS." Everywhere else, the message seems to be "men are just controlled by their sex drive and that's just the way it is- we can't have equality because men would never be able to do that."

Feminists respect men more than that.

My challenge to you: I want you to notice when you're watching TV and this "women as reward" theme appears. When the commercial wants to get across the message "good things are happening to this guy" and they show a beautiful woman wanting him.

Because this is dehumanizing. Women are not your reward. Ever.

Also, buy oreos! Their ad was my favorite. Image source.

So I have water. You want me to feel bad?

I saw this graphic on Facebook, and I wonder what the intended message is:

Image source.

Text: "Each day, the average American uses a minimum of 130 gallons of clean water. Each day, 783 million people use as little as 5 gallons of unclean water."

So, no source is cited, but I'll just assume those 2 statements are true. Even though I don't get what it means by "the average American uses a minimum of 130 gallons"- how can it be both average and minimum? Maybe they took an average for every day of the year, and the lowest average was 130? Who knows. Whatever. I don't like how it's worded.

So we have 2 true statements here, but since they're presented together like that, the reader is obviously supposed to see it as some kind of a comparison.

Maybe it's innocent. Maybe the comparison is just to give me an idea of what amount of water I think is "normal", so that I'm able to understand how low 5 gallons is. Perhaps if I had no idea how much water I use every day, I wouldn't understand that "5 gallons" is absurdly low.

Maybe it's just to show that other people live very differently than I do, and that's just reality.

But that's not what I felt when I read this. I felt like it was almost an accusation. It was trying to make me feel guilt. The juxtaposition of those 2 statistics sends the message "Americans are hogging all the water, and they should feel BAD because other people don't have clean water."

As if there's something WRONG with Americans using 130 gallons, when other people don't even have clean water.

No. The amount of water I use on a given day has NO EFFECT on the water available to people ON A DIFFERENT CONTINENT.

Seriously.

This cat keeps flushing the toilet, and that's the reason that children in India die of diarrhea. Image source.

If other people don't have clean water, it's because they don't have the infrastructure to bring them water where they live. It's because the technology hasn't been put in place where they live. And that's a problem. Everyone should have clean water. But I don't see how any good can come out of a comparison like the one in the above image. It seems like it's just trying to make Americans feel bad.

If you want to judge whether it's good or bad for the average American to use 130 gallons of water, let's look at what it's doing to the environment. Let's look at what it's doing to the supply of fresh water in the US. But the fact that someone 5000 miles away doesn't have a pipe going to their house has no bearing on whether it's somehow immoral for me to take a long shower.

Yes, let's donate to World Vision (I just did) and other organizations that work to bring water to every part of the world. Because it totally is a problem, and it totally is something that a lot of organizations are working on, making progress, improving people's lives. But I see no reason that I should think it's immoral to use 130 gallons of water for myself every day.

And issues like this- about poverty, injustice, lack of resources- they're so hard to understand because I've never experienced anything like that before. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel. I tried my best to present the facts accurately when I wrote about the world's water and sanitation crisis. It's a problem, and those of us who are able to donate money should definitely do so, but at the same time I don't think it's right to guilt people into it, and I don't want us to view other parts of the world as some homogeneous lump of impoverished one-dimensional people, who spend all their time being sad about how they don't have food or education. They're real people. They have families, they have inside jokes, they have interests and dreams.

And maybe it's impossible for me to understand without actually visiting another country and meeting the people who live that way.

What do you think? Is there some kind of accusation/guilt implied in the above graphic? How should we respond to those statistics?

Is this shampoo commercial sexist or not?

(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?