"There is difference and there is power. And who holds the power decides the meaning of the difference." --June Jordan

Monday, March 9, 2009

Getting Called Out

So, I was just watching TV with Dan (the fiance), and the annoying Burger Shots commercial I posted about a while back came on. After I loudly expressed my disgust for this commercial for making women out to be mindless automatons who melt at the sight of something small, Dan felt it necessary to point out that my post about this commercial came only a few days after this post, in which I melt over a video full of tiny animals making various uses of a cell phone screen.

I insisted through my laughter that there's a difference between baby animals and baby hamburgers! and that there's a difference between this commercial and that one!

It was definitely an amusing observation. However, I still hold that even though I might fall into a stereotype now and then doesn't mean that groups of women should be depicted in a stereotypical fashion to sell meat on television.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm going to agree that there is a substantial difference between the overt sexualization of women as mindless, cooing creatures over meat and men and you posting a video of animals acting like pplz, which regardless of gender should probably appeal to anyone's cute factor (as I think has been proven true via lolcats). Plus, we know the Burger King ad was specifically geared toward a male audience based on sexist assumptions about both men and women, while the cell phone ad did not indicate in any way it was intended purely for women to gush over. Not to char your fiance too much, but he's a little off the mark in his observation (unless he's suggesting, I guess, he's too manly for the animal video). ;)

Tracey said...

Yeah, the differences are obvious to both of us, but we still got a nice laugh out of the coincidence of those two posts being so close together.

Anonymous said...

It's funny you make those excuses at the end, because I make those excuses for my stereotypical behavior all the time. Sure I find bunnies exceptionally cute, and sure I care way too much about my hair, and sure I cry at the drop of a hat, but I'm DIFFERENT from other girls who are the same way, because I'm smarter and cooler and more ironic. Right?

Tracey said...

There's something unsettling about the "I'm different" mentality, because it assumes that there's something wrong with all/most women, and that the only way to be cool is to be less like other women. My problem isn't with feeling like I'm different somehow, but that the stereotype that all women are a certain way is harmful.