Sexism alive and well in Federer Lindt chocolate ad
Jane Osmond
WVoN co-editor
We write a lot here at Women’s Views on News about how the media portrays women as sexual objects, and how this has an adverse effect on the way that women are perceived on the world’s stage.
However, the use of sexist tropes is not restricted only to women, as evidenced by the latest Lindt chocolate advert featuring the tennis player Roger Federer.
The simplistic storyline features Federer passing through airport security with a bag full of Lindt chocolates, only to be greeted by two women who demand that he turns around so that they can examine how his trousers fit his body.
Worse still, they tell him he has to undergo a strip search in order to pass through airport security.
Obviously the ad (men) are sticking to the concept of the male gaze, only this time – oh how extremely original – they have transferred this to a pair of female security staff, presumably because it is funny when sexism is reversed.
This ad, coupled with the latest series of the UK reality TV series Coach Trip – which serves up a vignette of an older woman sexually harassing a young man – underlines that the sexism which women routinely suffer in the media, is now alive and well for men too.
And don’t get me started on the kitchen ads that feature men as completely incompetent idiots, such as the Uncle Ben’s rice advert.
Unsurprisingly, the board of Lindt is comprised of four men and the board of Gotham Inc, the advertising agency employed by Lindt, four men and one woman.
Am I the only one that sees this kind of sexism as equally unfunny and unacceptable, and how it underlines the singular lack of imagination that the advertising industry displays day after day after day?
Epic fail, boys.
Agree 100%. Though a lot of female advertising execs regularly produce similarly sexist adds.
As for adds portraying domestic violence of women on men. And advertising standards around the world say they are ok.
At least they do tend to uphold complaints where women are portrayed in a poor light.
Though it isn;t men who are portrayed in advertising as hapless and stupid. Just married men, who luckilly have woves to take care of them. Single men drive cool cars are are totally in control of their lives