ghost-modernism

alright, Advertising, let me be straight with you for a second here: where on earth are you getting your numbers? if slut-shaming is the name of the game, at least break 30, for christ’s sake, this girl is at least 18! 

just in case that was too subtle: I am joking and irritated. if this ad thinks this woman is a nasty ho, lord knows what it would make of me, as someone who has slept with almost twice as many people over the course of the past several years. (although if the idea is that she boned 20 dudes at once or in a single day, not over all time, that is super duper intense but still HER PREROGATIVE, broheim.)

also, this is very much one of those situations in which I wonder what the response would be if this ad featured a male model—or perhaps even more interestingly, a gay male model. I feel like this idea would be less upsetting if displayed only as part of a multi-gendered triptych? thoughts, internet?

bananafin:

coketalk:

This may be a campaign about HIV/AIDS awareness, but that’s no excuse. This is blatant misogyny, really sinister stuff that conveys a much more profound message about the female body.

Take another look at it. She’s got a killer smile, but still, you can’t see her eyes. The model is cropped so that she’s essentially headless. What makes her human is gone. What makes her a woman is on display. That’s a very deliberate creative choice.

She is an object to be fucked without a brain or an identity. Worse still, her vagina is a fully indexed destination on a Google map. The visual metaphor is so potent (and porn is so ubiquitous) that this image is more jarring than one in which she shows us her actual pussy.

It’s not about the fact that she’s had sex with Bill Johnson and 19 others. Who gives a fuck? What’s toxic is the idea that they checked into her vagina on Foursquare. It’s saying is that a her private parts aren’t private at all. They’re public. That’s the implicit message in this image, and it’s degrading as hell.

It’s not slut-shaming so much as it’s female-shaming, and it reinforces the age-old cultural narrative that women’s bodies aren’t their own.

I’ve seen this floating around, and it makes me so profoundly uncomfortable. It’s up there with the Sex Without A Condom Means You’re Fucking Hitler commercial.