It had a woman's bottom in a bikini, standing in front of the beach, with a Andriod Scanner symbol tattooed above her left butt cheek. It said 'Go on, snap a photo, you know you want to. Send the code #### to see if you win our Spring Break Getaway contest!'
Except, it wasn't a whole women.
That would have been a little bit annoying, a women glancing over her shoulder, smirking a bit. No, the thing that made it incredibly problematic was that it was only a woman's buttocks, cut away from the rest of her body. Just a tanned, generic hip display, like some sort of store mannequin. The caption made it even worse. 'Go on, you know you want to.' I find this weird considering the majority of the us college population is now women, and i don't believe that's any different at ball state. The posters implication is either implying women aren't important enough to try and appease with this advertisement or that all women love to gawk at other women on the beach in a sexual manner and take voyeuristic photographs of them. Now that I think about it, this advertisement was insulting to men as well, assuming most of them would haver a problem being thought of as creepy perverts who dissect women with their eyes and snap photographs like stalkers just awaiting the restraining order.
I don't watch most modern movies. I don't buy beauty magazines. I avoid television aimed at adults audiences (Dexter, House, True Blood, Mad Men ). I do these things because I hate seeing women turned from vibrant, powerful, wonderfully complex individuals into mere sexual items whose conquest mark an important step along the MAN's storyline. However, I cannot avoid this kind of advertising, much of self-inflicting by women, no matter how much I withdraw from culture. The only way to truly avoid it is to never leave the house. Which sometimes sounds appealing, but I digress.
Arguing 'just Look away', or 'If you don't pay attention to it, it won't effect you' doesn't realize that one CAN withdraw from the culture as much as possible and still be deeply effected by it.
It is all invasive and inescapable. perhaps, maybe, there should be more restraint on how women can be used to sell items. We're not items. We're people. Our hips evolved this way in order to bring life into this world, not to get entires to stupid MTV Getaway Spring Break contests.
