Badvertising: the Case of Guitar Hero

Cross-posted to Virginia NOW blog

The problem with some advertising campaigns is that they aren’t that original to begin with and then they never change.  Exhibit A, Guitar Hero.  Their current advertising campaign involves putting various celebrities, athletes, and supermodels into collared shirts and tube socks and dancing around a big house a la Tom Cruise in Risky Business.

At first, I found these commercials moderately amusing.  Look! Celebrities and athletes kickin’ it just like us regular folks by playing Guitar Hero.  Even funnier to think about them dancing around their respective houses dressed like that.  But then, I began to get a bit uncomfortable…

Why does Kobe Bryant get to wear long baggy shorts when Heidi Klum is put in lingerie?

Male Feminists?

Spitfire and I have been discussing the possibility of roping in more guest bloggers as we find our personal plates rather full. (I myself just started a new relationship…meet my new boyfriend, Graduate School. He keeps me up late nights with fiery discussion of Dewey Decimal versus Library of Congress Classification…mmm… nerdylove.) So I suggested that it would be interesting to get a guy to guest blog.

And then we heard the metaphorical crickets chirp on both sides of the Gchat.

This has been a common debate within feminist circles–can men be feminists? In its most basic terms, I tend to wholeheartedly agree that yes, men can be feminists! Men can believe in gender equality! But upon further investigation I begin to wonder. Between the theory of male feminists and the the actuality of male feminists, there has been a disjoint as I find theory hasn’t manifested itself into actuality…at least that I have personally witnessed.

Respect Women!

So this afternoon I’m wandering aimlessly down 48th Street towards 6th Ave, having been deterred from crossing 5th Ave due to the Veterans Day parade, thus rendering me unable to lunch at Cosi (tear). I’m slightly spacing out until I walk by an ad on the side of a telephone booth. I glance over but kept walking, let it sink in for a few seconds, and then did the most un-New Yorker thing I can possibly imagine–I turned around, walked back to the sign and took a picture with my phone. But this is why:

“Eat your vegetables. Finish your homework. Respect women.” it says, while the young boy wears a sweatshirt that says “Awaiting Instruction.” Teach your children to respect women! How simple and yet how awesome! Don’t just shame your daughters into not wearing short skirts cuz they’ll be asking for it! Teach your sons to respect women and not take advantage of them! This was a day after I read this story that cites my hometown newspaper (woot Minneapolis!) which profiles college activists’ attempts to focus sexual assault education towards men:

Instead of teaching women not to walk alone at night or to carry Mace, some colleges are trying something much harder — changing college men.

…”The fact of the matter is that prevention comes down to, largely, males. Because males are primarily the ones perpetrating these crimes,” said Lauren Pilnick, sexual violence education coordinator at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Having men vocalize and work against violence against women is in my mind an integral part in combating domestic violence and sexual assault. The ad was posted by New York State Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, as part of their Coaching Boys Into Men campaign, a yearlong campaign launched last October…yet this is the first I’m hearing of it. I’m hoping that it made some sort of impact around the state–it certainly made me stop in my tracks and turn around, in the best of ways.

long time no link

yes, yes, yes. mayhem has let BTW fall to the wayside. she’s been rather busy, i’ll have you know, what with procuring herself a full time job in teh sitee. the rumors are true, she has become a cubicler. but on the plus side they sent her to DC for a glorious reunion with spitfire. so said job is not so bad, it just tends to keep her from blogging. or staying awake past 10.

shall we do a little linking??