There is an old folk tale about a noble lord and his coach driver who threw the lord’s new bride to the wolves chasing them in order to survive. The lord and driver reasoned that the bride was less valuable. Madison Avenue, with the permission of CBS, did something similar to women last Sunday.
On Sunday evening about thirty minutes before the Super Bowl game began I decided to place a message in my Facebook update status. The message was simple. “Super Bowl Sunday is the day with the highest incidences of domestic violence against women.” I urged my friends to “check themselves” and break the cycle. My friend Ken D. pointed out that increased violence on Super Bowl Sunday is a myth and that women face domestic violence at a higher rate on Christmas and Thanksgiving days. We both reiterated that Super Sunday was still an important day to speak up and speak out.
As I settled into my well worn couch with my snacks at the ready I was dismayed to learn that Sunday’s attempt to dehumanize women would come from the minds and focus groups of advertisers on Madison Avenue. So we are clear. Commercials have always degraded women for profit and Super Bowl commercials especially. With that said, let me state unequivocally that in my 44 years of existence (yes, I am as old as the Super Bowl itself) I’ve never witnessed the level of hatred of women that occurred in between plays on the field this past weekend.
Let’s start from the beginning. Before the game begins Snickers tells us that the only way to stop friends from saying we play football like an 88 year-old woman (played by Betty White) is to stuff ourselves with refined white sugar covered in chocolate. Yeah, in the new decade pummeling elderly women to the ground while on a sugar high is the hilarious new way to “man up”.
Without a break the next commercial takes the stage. Now we get to view the controversial Focus On the Family ad that not only subtly attacks a women’s right to control her own body but gives us the added bonus of being able to watch Heisman Trophy-winning American football quarterback “Tim”Tebow viciously knock his mother to the ground. I’d like to know from Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family when hitting your mother became a family value?
GoDaddy.com’s selling of women’s bodies in some attempt at soft-core porn is nothing compared to what comes in the second quarter of the game. Dockers tells us that it’s time for men “to wear the pants” again and they are even willing to send us a free pair to make it happen. I guess Dockers Brand at Levi Strauss would know a thing or two about keeping women in their place considering that their boards of directors, along with most corporations in the United States, are still made up of a majority of white males rather than reflecting the racial and gender composition of our country.
As the second quarter is well under way I hear myself mutter “don’t get me started on the Dove commercial.” It was a mutter that only I heard as my partner Jessica had long abandoned the Super Bowl in disgust. As I start praying for the Super Bowl Half Time show to bring some sanity back to CBS, my absolute amazement with these commercials turns to sheer anger.
The Dodge Charger ad appears telling me that treating my girlfriend with basic decency is just “too damn much” for her to ask and that if I don’t want to be emasculated by basic good manners I better draw the line when it comes to my car.
Flo TV comes a few minutes afterwards with an ad suggesting that men who spend time with their partners must be “spineless” and “wear skirts.” I mean what man would actually want to spend time with their wife/girlfriend/lover when they could be watching commercials debasing them during Super Bowl? Yeah Flo TV, it was difficult to watch you demean the women we love. “I hope whoever made this ad gets an infestation of bedbugs” I said to myself when half time thankfully arrived.
Whatever happened after half time is still a blur. Sometime during the third quarter an ad by Bridgestone ended Super Bowl Sunday. The commercial is about a man sometime in the future who, in a decision over parting with his life or hisBridgestone tires, decides that his wife is much less valuable than either.
At this point Super Bowl Sunday had long stopped being something fun and entertaining and turned both alarming and telling. My good friend Dan P. put it bluntly toBridgestone in a letter to the company. “My wife and I buy Bridgestone tires primarily to keep our family safe on the road. How can you possibly think than an ad so fundamentally demeaning to women conveys anything but contempt for your customers?” said Dan. “You should be ashamed. I will have to think long and hard before ever again purchasingBridgestone products,” he continued. As for me, you can tell Bridgestone that I will never buy another of its tires.
Violence against women is at an all time high. Three women are murdered each day in the United States and one-third of those by their intimate partners according to the National Organization of Women. It should not go unnoticed that the majority of victims in mass killings over the last several years have been women. What drives violence against women is a myth perpetrated by society that woman are less than human and that’s exactly the message that these commercials drove home to millions on Super Bowl Sunday.
I wish these ads had been some orchestrated campaign by political extremists seeking to undermine the equality of women. At least then we’d have an organized target for our anger. There was no conspiracy against women occurring on Super Bowl Sunday; rather, each commercial was created individually by men unconnected with one another. I find that even more frightening. So should you.