“Sorry for trying to grope you in the bus”
This picture and legend come from a popular beer advertising campaign by Ogilvy Argentina in my country.
The whole campaign shows young men treating women in a misogynist yet childlysh way, which is why the apology by stating “growing up takes time, making a good beer too”.
In the TV commercial you can watch:
* A guy and a girl in a car parked near a motel at night (in my country people go to motels to have sex). She’s saying no with her head but he’s saying yes, came on, came on. As a result, she has no choice but leave the car and stay in the middle of a far dark trail.
*Another scene shows two couples in a house. We can deduce the boys and the girls recently know each other. One couple starts making out, and the guy from the other couple takes off his shoes and throws them in the air, in a way that he’s pushing the girl to get into a sex activity that she clearly doesn’t want to get to.
*Then, the announcer says sorry for the dirty compliments while a scene shows a girl walking in the street being harassed by a man complimenting her. We can tell by her face is that she’s definitely disgusted and annoyed.
Not only did we have to watch the damn thing on TV, but they had no better idea than hitting this poster “Sorry for trying to grope you in the bus” on some bus stops, promoting a criminal behavior such as public sexual harassment.
A lot of people from my country, encouraged by activist groups that fight for women’s rights among others, condemned and repudiated the campaign on the beer website, the advertising agency website, twitter and facebook. But you can still watch the entire commercial on the beer website, which they said on twitter they will remove but still didn’t.
I’m actually very happy to see how all this matter turned out. So many people are repudiating both the beer brand and the advertising agency, telling them to stop stimulating gender violence in ways that seem normal, asking them to cease creating these kinds of commercials that normalize criminal behaviors towards women and every feminine spectrum in our society.
However, most of people here don’t even care about it, or even worse, they cannot see what the problem is. They are so immersed in this culture that implies that women shouldn’t be conceived as individuals who have the natural right to walk freely in the street and take a damn bus without being touched, but mere objects which only exist so as for men can look at, compliment for (or not), have fun with, being turned on by and so on.
My country and many others from Latin America are not the best when it comes to modern humanitarian perspective among gender roles. And now we even have a fuc*ing Pope L But the fact that still a lot of people is raising against how this subject and many others like gender inequality or pro-life religious statements are spread in the media is such a proof that my community is giving its first baby steps to evolution. And it makes me proud.
Here’s a FB page created to repudiate the campaign and the twitter hashtag is #NoaSchneider
but i thought the point of the tv spot was to show that those actions are wrong, it clearly portrays the guys as idiots and shows that you shouldnt do those things, or maybe i am naive
Yeah, you’re right, the spot shows that the actions are clearly wrong and men do it because they’re immature and chidlysh. But an immature and idiot man would probably be irresponsible, still living with their parents at 43, keep his room dirty for ages , etc..However, he would not try to hurt a person’s space. Harassing a women when she’s walking in the street, or trying to touch her by taking advantage of a crowded bus is something a crimminal would do, not a childlysh man. The TV spot was released some years ago and was cirticized for it, you can see a parody video here http://vimeo.com/39479530 (it’s in Spanish), but now they hitted posters with that legend on bus stops and obviuolsy people won’t take it anymore. The actions they promote on the stops are not naive nor silly nor chidlysh but very harmful for women who have to take the bus everyday and try not to be groped by a perverted man.
no, i meant i was the naive for thinking the commercial was supposed to be a denounce, not a gloryfication of such behavior
El problema es que lo ponen como si fuera algo natural de los hombres, algo que no pueden evitar. Algo que con pedir perdón ya está, porque boys will be boys. Según lo que he aprendido en tumblr eso es rape culture. No estás siendo un inmaduro por tocarme la cola cuando estamos apretados en un bondi. Estás siendo un reverendo pelotudo, y un acosador. Pero la publicidad te da a entender que no es culpa de los varones que sean acosadores, porque es normal para ellos, y que con una cervecita y carita de perro arrepentido y un osito de peluche en las manos se arregla todo. No es así, eso es lo que me molestó de la publicidad. No lo tomaron como algo malo que no se debe hacer, sino como algo malo que “no se puede evitar hacer”. (Facu no pienses que te lo digo de mala forma sino que esa es la forma en que interpreté la campaña y es indignante que mucha gente no vea ese mensaje, porque se supone que el spot es “gracioso”)
