Monday, February 8, 2010

Superbowl Commercials and Feminism

Like most Americans, I spent this evening sitting around the TV with family and friends, eating guacamole and watching the Superbowl. As much as the football game itself fascinates me, I have always been intrigued by the commercials. Several years ago, I started keeping track of the different categories of ads. For example, a few of the most common types from this year were TV shows, cars, and beer.
       Out of the 113 commercials that aired between the kickoff and the end of the game, 30 were for CBS shows. But the ads that I found the most interesting were far from the most common. They were the two godaddy.com commercials, featuring the "Go Daddy Girl".
    Both the ads depicted a woman being recognized as the Go Daddy Girl. Another woman in the ad then asked if she was "go daddy material". Then she ripped the front of her shirt open, and the commercial ended, directing viewers to visit the Go Daddy website if they wanted to see more.
       My question hardly even needs to be stated. Are these commercials inappropriate? I would say yes. The Superbowl has been branded as a family show ever since the Justin Timberlake/Janet Jackson fiasco a few years ago. In the years following their "wardrobe malfunction", CBS has tried to make the even more family-friendly  by having much older bands play the halftime show. So why ruin the efforts with such sexist and provocative ads? The network chose to deny other ads on the grounds that they were not in keeping with the station's values. Why on earth did they not deny this one too? I am all for the funny ads, but this one made me feel more like I was about to see pornography.
      If we keep portraying women as sex symbols in media, true equality can never be achieved. C'mon, CBS.
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2 comments:

  1. Sam HFebruary 9, 2010 at 11:41 AM

    First of all, you cannot blame CBS for the ads that air on their channel; they go to the highest bidder. Secondly, I see nothing wrong with using sex appeal to sell products. It would be sexist if there were only commercials that used women as sex symbols, but there are a lot of commercials that use men as sex symbols. I can see your argument about this commercial being too racy for 'family TV' but not that it is sexist. It makes me a little angry the way that commercials like this are always assumed to be sexist, but those with men are just using sex appeal. There is a difference between using sex appeal to sell products and being sexist (is, if they had portrayed women as dumb housemaid-worthy, then I'd have a problem.)

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  2. Maeli G.February 9, 2010 at 4:18 PM

    I think you have a point, Sam, and I agree that men are used as sex objects almost as frequently as women are. But you don't think the Go Daddy commercial portrayed women as unintelligent sex objects? The gal aspired to being a large-breasted, massage-giving, stereotypical dumb blond spokeswoman. Something about that screams sexism to me. I don't know about you.

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