Girls Like Beer Too!

I was watching TV earlier and a Corona commercial came on. Its primary focus was on a girl in a bikini on a beach. A couple is sitting on beach chairs by the ocean and have a table between them with two coronas on it. A girl walks by the couple in a small white bikini and the man, of course, turns his head to watch her walk away. Then his girlfriend takes the lime out of his corona and squirts him in the eye with it. End of commercial.

I literally stared at the TV for 2 minutes before being able to comprehend what just happened. When I think of beer, I think of friends, coming together in a bar, perhaps at a home, and drinking, smiling, and laughing together. I don't think of a girl in a bikini walking by a man who then gets squirted in the eye. (Thanks to TiVo) I rewinded it and showed my sister.

Me: You have to see this commercial
Sister: (After watching it) Yeah, that's what advertisers do, this is obviously directed towards men.
Me: *awkward silence* That's dumb. Girls like beer too. *more awkward silence*

My sister is just another victim of our society's brainwash. Although beer has absolutely nothing to do with a girl on the beach, they made this commercial because they thought something would trigger in a man's brain to want beer. I like beer. All I have to see is one on TV. That's it. That's all they have to show and I'm sold. But of course, sex sells. I looked up some beer commercials that have been banned in the past, one with slogans such as "Beer Makes Women Beautiful."

It made me think of the slogans Jean Kilbourne wrote about in her article "Sexist Advertising, Then & Now," such as "If your hair isn't beautiful the rest hardly matters" or "My boyfriend told me he loved me for my mind. I was never so insulted in my life." (For cigarettes). Even though I find these kind of funny, it seems like society really thinks we're dumb showing advertisements like this to us. They're using slogans that they feel like would apply to us. Reading that it's an insult that a boyfriend would love a girl for my mind does not make me want to buy cigarettes. It's so sad and depressing that advertisers would even think that. Kilbourne wrote: ""Sometimes a woman's body morphs into the product, so she becomes the car or the shoe or the bottle of beer. An ad that ran recently in several upscale women's magazines featured a woman whose pubic hair had been shaved into the Gucci logo. We are encourage to feel passion for our products rather than our partners." I have seen this so many times. I'll flip through a magazine and see a woman shaped as a beer bottle or a woman half naked for a perfume ad. And I'm like, seriously? This has absolutely nothing to do with the product and surely does not want me to buy the product. These commercials, ads, and products that we see every day that have to do with sex or demoralizing women are having an effect on women. This image of beauty and desire is literally hammered into our minds to think that this is what is desirable. But it's not. I think it's really degrading that our society thinks this is what attracts us. It's even more degrading that it actually does to some extent. I really think we should have better advertising that doesn't disrespect a certain group or insult our intelligence.

Corona picture: popsop.com
Beer over girls picture: ladiesocb.com
Sexist Advertising, Then & Now: Kilbourne, Jean. "Sexist Advertising, Then & Now." Ms. Magazine. N.p., 2010. Web.