Another crass and sexist ad

[Lunaballoon]

Anyone else seen this new Pot Noodles ad? I'm really sick of this kind of crass, sexist crap. I'm thinking of putting in a complaint to the ASA. Anybody with me?

[NotAgainTrevor]

The message I seem to be getting is that until women make sure that 100% of men are 100% happy, 100% of the time, we have no right to complain about anything ever. Cos that's equality dontcha know .

[TheSameBoat]

Where does it say you can only care about either men or women? I complained to the ASA about the Oven Pride and the Boots Ads. Does that mean I now have the right to complain about the objectifacation of women, which quite frankly is a lot more common and in-your-face than a few Diet Coke ads.

I think the ratio is something like 1:9 IIRC according to a Euro report down a few years ago.

[Onanothermission]

I saw this last night for the first time.

I don't care which water-shed it may be shown after - its crass, its demeaning and it has no relevance to the product being marketed.

I've complained to the ASA.

I've also looked at the other brands marketed by Unilever www.unilever.co.uk/brands-in-action/view-brands.aspx

But get this - the same company that owns the PotNoodle brand feels the need to do this..............

Doves mission is to encourage all women and girls to develop a positive relationship with beauty, helping to raise their self-esteem, and thereby enabling them to realise their full potential. In 2005, we developed the Dove Self-Esteem Programme (DSEP) to make real changes to the ways women and girls perceive and embrace beauty.

DSEP was established as an agent of change to inspire and educate girls and women about a positive relationship with beauty - committed to helping girls to strengthen self-esteem and build a healthy body image.........In 2012, Dove was awarded the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Body Images Body Confidence Award for the Growing Up Campaign

May be, if PotNoodles were marketed differently, perhaps we wouldn't need a DSEP programme in the first place .......... or, if their significant contingent of female Non-Exec Directors had any influence at all, perhaps they would get the Chief Marketing Officer in front of them to explain himself......................

How gullible a consumer am I? Well, I have no expectation that the ASA will do anything about this ad, and Unilever will continue to serially market PotNoodle in a demeaning manner because lets face it, the more people talk about it and write about it, the more air-time and column-inches they receive. But right now, I'm off to re-write my shopping list..................

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

What's the problem about raising money for a disease that affects one in 16 people? I've never understood.

[CaptChaos]

So that's a no then. Much more constructive to whine about RFL not letting the boys play than to take part in something organised for the boys, isn't it? Raises far more money for the causes you and people who share your POV say women should be working for, does it?

I despair.

[GentleMenJTheReasonableMRA]

Thanks Buffy I hadn't seen that one. I hope it gets the support it deserves.

[scallopsrgreat]

No its not unethical. Men can organise themselves I'm sure (they certainly manage to when power and money are involved). What is unethical is men insisting that they have a right to be in female spaces coz their feelings are hurt or summat.

You read what Buffy wrote about RFL and why it is women only. Why are you denying women their experiences? Why aren't you tackling the reasons behind why women feel the way they do?

[GentleMenJTheReasonableMRA]

Grimbletart

Of course it's OK for Women to do their own thing. In fact I can see it does a lot of good above and beyond the fundraising (I've been more then happy to sponsor when asked). I don't think my suggestion of a second race for the Guys would rock that boat.

I've known a lot of Women do Movember actually, cardboard tashes and the like. Lots of fun. So with a bit of imagination Women (Mosistas) are up there with the Guys .

Like I said a whole bunch of Guys want to celebrate their love ones in a big happy atmosphere. It seems unethical to prevent them from doing so.

[grimbletart]

As we are on the theme of women's sports, the first women's cycling tour starts tomorrow setting off from Oundle in Northants and I understand there is TV coverage.

See //www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/ for a list of articles about it.

Incidentally it has lots of male support and enthusiasm including from one Bradley Wiggins. No what about the menz from him! So men with probably a lot more sporting pedigree than our male complainer re Race for Life seem to think it is OK for women to do their own thing!

(Can't remember too many women getting antsy about the Movember campaign for men's health because they couldn't take part - unless of course you are the proud possessor of a female moustache).

[scallopsrgreat]

I should point out that is able-bodied Olympics. I haven't got all the numbers for the Paralympics but the numbers appear to be more even. There are also more mixed events in the Paralympics.

[scallopsrgreat]

Following on from sashh's post parity in the Olympics comes in many forms, not just the number or type of events offered for both men and women.

Synchronised swimming and rhythmic gymnastics are offered to women only. This is not because of exclusionary tactics on the part of women.

In canoeing, swimming, cycling, shooting and athletics there are events in which women compete over lesser distances than men. No idea why that would be.

There are also big discrepencies in the maximum number of competitors in certain sports. Football being a big one. So although 18 men/women are allowed per nation, there are less female teams allowed to compete. Cycling, rowing, canoeing, shooting, sailing are others. I probably needn't say that of course men are allowed a greater number of competitors in each event than women.

There are still more medal opportunities for men. And if a nation were to send a full team there would still be more men than women.

Not only that there are more male than female coaches/staff.

Women have to fight for every concession they are given. They have to be "allowed" to compete at the Olympics. Their existence has to be justified. Men don't. So begrudging a women-only space for a running event for charity is churlish in the very least and referring back to my post on Wed 30-Apr-14 16:59:15, you need to think about your boundaries and other people's. Men don't have to be the centre of everything. Really they don't.

[Anniegetyourgun]

They're kind of the opposite of Mumsnet, then. GentleMenJ is many posting under one name, whereas MN appears under many names but is actually all the same person. That's why we all agree with each other about everything.

On a side note, I always found the Diet Coke advert irritating anyway, but not enough to be bothered to complain. It always seemed to me that it was not objectifying men so much as objectifying women objectifying men, if that makes sense. For example I don't recall there being any ugly or elderly women rushing to the window - though to be fair it's been a few years since I last saw it (a very good argument, if any were needed, for continuing not to bother to get my tv reception sorted, and I don't care if it is on Youtube).

[AnotherSpinningFuckingRainbow]

Why is GentleMenJ in the plural? Are they a collective, like the Borg?

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

Sashh, it was the amazing campaign by OxygenThief that got the numbers much closer to parity, didn't you know?


That's why he feels slightly miffed that, even though he has complained about the advert in the OP and complained tirelessly about all the other adverts he listed in his post, we all ignored him when he came on here and asked for help in his campaigns. I mean, that must be what happened, right, or he wouldn't be so cross with us?

[sashh]

In 2012 there were 23 athletics events for women, 24 for men.

How many sports clubs exclude women? Do they ever examine why they do that? Whether that should change? I know quite a few (eg Lords) changed when the national lottery started because they could not discriminate and get lottery finding.

Or did you mean other Olympic events? Canoeing, 11 men's events, 5 women's, and this was due to removing one men's event and replacing it with a woman's race.

Weight lifting, men 8, women 7.

Boxing, men 9, women 5.

Rowing, men 8 women 6.


I think the only event at the moment that is all female is synchronized swimming and a lot more sports have equal men's and women's competitions than they used to.

[LoveSardines]

And I like the responses to the above posts about running:

Posters:

Until very recently women were excluded from many running events for entirely spurious reasons, women campaigned and fought long and hard over decades to be allowed to run certain races.

Response (boils down to): So fucking what. I couldn't give a monkeys. Now what about this cillit bang ad, eh?

[LoveSardines]

Maybe the radical feminists who work at and run the ASA sometimes use men's names in their correspondence to throw people off the scent?

It's absolutely definitely possible.

[LoveSardines]

How strange. I have contacted the ASA a couple of times about ads which I felt were demeaning to women and I got responses from men saying they didn't see a problem.

How strange.

I must have somehow managed to get the only bloke working at the otherwise all-female feminist activist organisation that is the UK advertising standards authority

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

Out of interest, rutters, did you ever complain about the depiction of women in any ads?

Not attributing this to you directly but quite often on these threads people come on and post "why are you feminists complaining about that when you should be complaining about this?" when a "wow, that ad is crap -
I've found another bad one, if I complain about yours will you complain about mine?" would seem more likely to get a positive result all round.

[BoobsRUs]

I used to complain about ads but only ones that women find offensive ever get removed (I think it's women who make the decisions, at least I only ever have correspondence with women)

Aw it must be hard for you to come across systematic sexism where the people in charge of decisions that are important to you are all made by people of one sex. :( Go on tell me what it's like.


*for the record the people who write the letters are usually secretaries.

[dementedma]

Movember isn't just for men! It it wasn't for the joys of waxing, I could grow a tache in a month which would terrify most blokes!

[rutters1]

The last time I bothered was over a year ago. I realised that if they were prepared to let men be depicted in those ways it wasn't worth complaining any more.

Didn't see the point of saving the letter..till now.

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

Upthread, someone else has posted their response from ASA.

[rutters1]

Really? Scans of letters received on a public forum?

Do you always ask for proof of poster's correspondence?