by Miranda
Mother Jones has a great roundup of sexist commercials from the Superbowl this weekend. My personal (least-)favorite is this one by Fiat:
There are so many problems with this ad, it’s hard to know where to begin. There’s the stereotypical sexualization of an Italian woman. There’s the lack of subtitles or English translation, which suggests that the man and the audience should be entirely uninterested in what she has to say. (Women! So easy to tune out.) There’s the fact that she turns into the car — she is literally an object than he can buy. And seriously, the foam on her chest?? Not subtle.
Luckily I’m not the only one who’s mad. Miss Representation, a campaign to empower women and girls by challenging their portrayal in the media, created the hashtag #NotBuyingIt for Superbowl viewers to use in tweets critiquing the ads as they aired in real time. One viewer tweeted about the Fiat ad: “In case we thought that women were humans, Fiat reminds us that they are in fact sexy machinery. Right. #notbuyingit”
So thanks, Miss Rep, for giving Superbowl viewers a vehicle to express their frustration and disgust with these retrograde ads!
P.S. We’re always partial to Miss Representation because Devanshi, one of the coordinators of the upcoming Stanford Women’s Leadership Conference, is featured in the film. Check her out on the homepage!
femtastic 