The holiday season is upon us, and while consumers may feel the pressure to find that perfect gift for everyone on their list, companies are facing a different sort of squeeze. In a market ever-increasing with options, how do they make sure customers will remain frequent? Thus the deluge of billboards, radio and TV ads, and catalogues begins.
While flipping through the Bloomingdale’s holiday catalogue, customers were shocked to come across an ad that seemed particularly ill-advised. In a full page, color spread, a woman clad in a black and white blazer and fringed skirt laughs happily at someone off camera, whilst a male—equally natty in a sharp suit—gazes across at her, unseen. His facial expression and the look in his eyes both unmistakably call out lust. The caption reads, in bold, capital letters, “SPIKE YOUR BEST FRIEND’S EGGNOG WHILE THEY’RE NOT LOOKING.”
The ad sparked outrage on social media, with one person tweeting, “Nothing gets me more in the Christmas spirit than ads condoning rape culture!” and another, “Here’s Bloomingdales [sic] advertising festive date rape and non-consensual drug abuse to sell fashion. Stay classy.”
After the ad had been shared, commented and condemned by many citizens of the Internet, Bloomingdale’s tweeted an apology, calling the content of the ad an “error” and “poor taste. Bloomingdale’s sincerely apologizes for this error in judgment.”
While an apology was certainly warranted, the bad taste in the mouth remains. What does it say about our culture that a successful, national chain could so unthinkingly use an ad that promotes sexual violence towards women?
Presumably the marketing department was put through its paces; focus groups were held, trends studied—models were even made up, dressed and photographed. The ad passed through this entire process. It’s tough to know whether that’s because people didn’t see the not subtle message, or simply because they didn’t care. Even tougher is attempting to decide if either one of those is inherently better than the other.
Ads promoting wholly inappropriate sentiments are nothing new; an ad from the sixties for Broomstick pants show five different men surrounding a woman in her underwear, each gripping a different part of her torso. The caption reads, “Ring around Rosie. Or Carol. Or Eleanor, etc.”
It’s easy to think that this is simply a creepy calling card from a bygone era, when sexual violence was smiled at indulgently and all women were apparently interchangeable, but the Bloomingdale’s ad—and others, like the Bud Light ad advising people to drink it and remove “no” from their vocabulary, or the Johnny Farah ad showing a man strangling a woman with one of the new belts now available for purchase—is a cold reminder that benign views of sexual violence and date rape are still all too common.
Rivka Hia, a board member of the YU Women’s Studies Society, said that the ad represented “a general blasé attitude in America about sexual assault and women’s safety in particular.” Hia questioned why there was a real need to create “nail polish to detect whether your drink has been spiked, and safety jewelry (see Athena) to notify the police immediately,” but rape culture still flourished and consent education lacked real promotion.
Hia also noted that “realistically, several people or groups had to approve” the ad before it was published. “Unfortunately, society hasn’t overwhelmingly looked down on rape culture, and thus it’s still something people are literally buying into.”
The general attitude about sexual violence, and rape in particular, has strong implications for females on college campuses today; last year alone, the saga of “Jackie” as detailed in Rolling Stone magazine, and Emma Sulkowicz’ mattress toting helped to promote awareness of the unwarranted sexual advances many girls face, sometimes on a daily basis. The fact that one in five women on college campuses will be sexually assaulted speaks not only to the dangers women face, but to the problem we still face as a society in consent education.
Said Hia, “In YU, and in many Orthodox schools and communities, consent education isn’t taught. Many institutions think their students and members are safe because of shomer negia and marriage, but neither are panaceas against sexual violence and domestic abuse, as it is possible to have unwanted sexual advances while shomer negia or married. Students who want to make a difference can educate themselves and their friends about consent, and communicate with their partners about their own practices.”