Background: TV often portrays men and fathers as idiots--to watch some videos of "dad as idiot" TV commercials, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, or here. 

As Bill Maher says, "Look at television...the wife is always brilliant and ethereal and right about everything and the husband is always just a dumb jerk who's lucky to have found her."

The National Organization for Women/NOW Foundation has launched a new campaign around ads which they label "Offensive to Women." The campaign involved Love Your Body Day 2007, which was October 18.

In this series, I'm reprinting some of the ads which NOW tells us are "Offensive to Women," giving my own humble opinion on the matter and soliciting yours. In You Be the Judge (Part I), I agreed with NOW. In Part II I agreed with them on one out of two.

Regarding the Winston ad on the left, NOW writes:

"Winston tries to convince young women how tough and cool they can be by smoking while waiting for a man. Hope he arrives soon...before lung cancer sets in.

Regarding Brown & Williamson, they write:

"Brown & Williamson appears to be marketing cigarettes to pre-teen girls with this ad that practically makes smoking look wholesome. Really not."

Regarding the Winston add, this is (sigh) another example of feminists' absolute refusal to acknowledge anti-male sexism. The ad isn't hostile to women, it's hostile to men who are, of course, not good enough, not "real men," etc. Regarding Brown & Williamson, yes, marketing cigarettes to young women is bad, but I doubt they market them any more to young women than to young men, so I don't see it as being a gender issue. I think NOW is very wrong on the Winston ad, and off mark on the B & W ad.

That brings NOW's score, in my book, to 2 out of 5 correct.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 2:37 pm and is filed under Feminism/NOW, Advertising, TV, Movies & Gender. You can trackback from your own site.