Do you think the Diet Coke adverts "objectify" men?

[foodworknews]

They've been going for years. It used to be a bunch of office women drooling over a window cleaner with his shirt off drinking the beverage.

The latest one a bunch of women in the park drool over a man who gets his shirt wet and removes it before proceeding to have a drink.

Isn't this basically the opposite of what we sometimes complain about?

[FreyaSnow]

I've found it, and if it is objectification at least it is objectification of somebody in their thirties. A lot of the objectification of women is actually objectification of teenage girls.

[BasilBabyEater]

It's the same as the constant objectification of women if:

men are constantly bombarded with images of themselves being objectified to the degree that women are

the man is vulnerable to rape and/ or sexual assault by the women shown objectifying him

the man has less economic, social and political power than the women shown objectifying him

the man exists in a context of constant, permanent objectification where his looks really are the most important thing about him and everything else can be undermined or dismissed if his looks don't meet with the approval of a female-owned, female-run media

as part and parcel of his classification as sex-class eye-candy, he is likely to earn less than a woman of the same class, race and educational achievement as him, his experience as a man is likely to be less reflected in culture and media than their experience as women, his experience as a man is in fact marginalised and "othered" and deemed not as universal as their experience as women

Is that the context then?

[ModeratelyObvious]

What KaseyM said.

And what Basil said.

[tethersend]

Exactly Basil.

[YouMakeMeWannaLaLa]

I hate this sort of thing. It gives people an excuse to say 'look, we have equality, there are objectified women And men so STFU'. And then you sound ever so fussy when you explain that this isn't the sort of equality we want (same goes for male strippers/ladettes etc.).

It's so lazy. I'm going to guess it was thought up by men who probably thought 'well we like semi-naked women so women must like semi-naked men'. And many of us do but not encouraging and justifying objectification in advertising.

That fucking awful advert for yoghurt with the woman who just wants a diet snack, a bubble bath and a fireman makes me sick too. Currently being held up by MRAs all across the internet as evidence that sexism does.not.exist

[foodworknews]

The older one:

And the newer one. Complete with the same music:

[LittleBearPad]

Of course they objectify men. They have for years now. I can't get too worried about it though because its a mere hillock of male objectification next to the Mount Everest of female objectification.

[LittleBearPad]

Also welcome Trudy

[rosabud]

Agree with all the comments above PLUS - looking at the original one form 1998, I haven't seen that for years and it's got something that I hadn't remembered - humour! The women, with all their "11.30, please" and "no wonder it's so impossible to get an apointment here" comments are laughing at/gently mocking themselves!! Whereas, in the Mount Everest of ads objectifying women - men are not often laughing at themselves.

[TrudyKockenlocker]

Thanks LittleBear! Where has this place been all my life?

[OctopusPete8]

Yes and also the women look older than the man in every advert.
But i think its more cheesy then offensive.

[YoniMatopoeia]

I Fucking hate this advert, specifically because the MRAs will use it to 'prove' that 'men are objectified just as much as women'

It makes me completely stabby when I see it.

[Ev1lEdna]

I truly dislike those adverts, almost as much as I hate the Lynx ads. I find it interesting that it is the women in them who need to go for their 'diet' coke break.

I don't think the adverts are akin to the objectification of women, however. The objectifying of women in society is so deeply ingrained and this kind of advert (where men are the focus) are so few and far between - making it an unfamiliar concept. I can't really see them as being the same thing. The diet coke adverts use the atypical idea of women looking at men as a reversal of the norm in order to sell their product.

[scallopsrgreat]

"I find it interesting that it is the women in them who need to go for their 'diet' coke break." Good point Ev1lEdna (great username btw). Also agree with KaseyM and Basil too.

[Boosterseat]

Oh yes, these adverts are fabulous aren't they

While we are at it -
"diet" coke - marketed at women with cheesy,vacuous,schoolgirl marketing.

Coke "zero" - manly advertisement? WTF is all that about?

Is it because only women "diet" to stay trim for the sexy menz?

Agree with Lala about the fireman/bath one too - surely that amount of cold hose water would be shite for your bath?

[MurderOfGoths]

"I hate this sort of thing. It gives people an excuse to say 'look, we have equality, there are objectified women And men so STFU'. And then you sound ever so fussy when you explain that this isn't the sort of equality we want"

Absolutely.

[LittleBearPad]

The diet coke / zero gender divide marketing is working though. We've spent the summer in Greece. When ordering diet cokes (coke light) my order would just be taken, DH would be offered coke zero by the waiters etc. Very weird as I believe they're basically the same thing except in 'girly' silver and 'manly' black packaging.

[BOF]

The adverts offend me (yeah, big deal, I know) because they sell a fundamentally dishonest view of the world to women/girls. They pretend that as long as women can ogle men, they are empowerfulized and all the real world sexism magically goes away. It doesn't.

[Zoe909]

great post basil.

what's an mra?!

[YoniMatopoeia]

Mra = men's (or Menz) rights activist.

[KaseyM]

More often than not in the relatively few ads where the man is objectified the women doing the objectifying still have to be pretty and meet a certain beauty standard themselves. Compare that to ads like Lynx where an ugly man gets to "bag" lots of hot women.

Even the Lynx ad for women where the women are running rampant with their urges they are gorgeous, dressed in cheerleader outfits and showing considerably less skin.

It's that sense of entitlement - that for women to have sexual desire they have to "earn" it by being sexy, whilst men just have to be, well, men.

[BasilBabyEater]

God that is such a good point KaseyM

I hadn't consciously clocked that, but of course it's there.

[Zoe909]

so true. yes, it would be too shocking if they were all overweight with glasses and plain. but really that might have been an ad that broke some new ground and pushed back some boundaries. If they weren't presented as stereotypical librarian types. Real women as dove would say. But real-er.

Thanks Yoni!

[YouMakeMeWannaLaLa]

On a similar theme advert annoys me...all the attractive office women crowd round a man for his bread () but the comedy 'twist' is that a larger woman fancies him too? Just weird and insulting all round.