Mmm, Chocolately-flavoured spooge. Unfortunately, watered down spooge from being spread over several comms, but still, chocolate spooge.

So, once upon a time,

kiddeternity was watching the Cartoon Network when it went to an ad-break. And there was an advert for Hersheys that featured the line "You know, girls are nuts".

kiddeternity was so very offended by this that she felt she just had to

I am writing regarding a commercial I recently saw aired 11:41 pm, 05/04/05 on Cartoon Network.
The commercial features a be speckled young man, who states, matter-of-factly, "You know, girls are nuts to begin with, but when you give them chocolate, they flip out, and you're like, hey, want some chocolate, and they're like, SIGH, a chocolate, I love chocolate SO MUCH, it's a great way to meet women, you pull out a Hershey Bar".

As a woman (and, I must add a FORMER Hershey customer), I am incredibly offended AND appalled by this ad. Not only do you make it perfectly clear that you feel the women who buy your candy are "nuts", but you also must think that we're idiots as well. The nerve of you to air a commercial so blatantly, rampantly misogynistic! It is bad enough that women have to deal with people in day to day life condescending to us at the drop of a hat; for a major company such as yourself to be so socially irresponsible as to air a commercial such as this one is simply unacceptable. "It's just an ad for chocolate", you may counter to my complaint. To that I ask you: If you make it acceptable to demean women to SELL CHOCOLATE, what message does that send? Is it OK to demean women and insult their sanity to sell stock? A car? Their wages?
So as a woman who's "nuts to begin with", who "flip[s] out" about your commercial insulting her, I say-- keep your chocolate. I don't want it anymore. I'm sure I'm not the only intelligent woman who can see she's being insulted and devalued to make you a buck.

KidEternity [ I used my real name, which most of you know, but I don't feel comfortable posting in LJ],
Woman, Feminist, PERSON and New College of Florida Alumni, Class of 2001-- In, yep, you guessed it-- Gender Studies.

But, not content with being a lone voice,

kiddeternity felt it nessesary to inform more people of her wonderful act - to encourage them to follow in her footsteps of advertising RAGE, she crossposted to all of the communities she's a member of:

20sknitters (young knitters)

_fake_it (synthetic hair)

_grrl_splendor_ (alternative style)

antimonyandlace (goth fashion)

asobiseksu (New York band Asobi Seksu)

lush_sing_sing (Emma Anderson, and her music projects Lush, and Sing Sing)

novcollinvis (some sort of RPG)

realvast (Vast, the band)

synthetichair (more synthetic hair)

tbm (The Birthday Massacre, another band)

the_cranes (another band - the Cranes)

tshirt_surgery (tshirts, and what to do with them)

wolfsheim_fans (another band - Wolfsheim)

Unusually for a knitting community,

20sknitters doesn't splooge much - people's general reactions are "meh", although

sandbbrown points out that Isn't that porn-ame time anyway? And, by the way, aren't you going a little "nuts" over chocolate?.

lizzie9208 makes an early start with "I love your icon! I love your icon! It really brings your point across about not exploiting and sterotyping women! ha ha!

Spamming is fun, isn't it?".

lizzie9208 appears to loathe offtopic crossposting, as we shall see when she responds to every single crosspost with the same comment, as well as visiting

kiddeternity's journal.

_grrl_splendor_'s reaction tends more toward the "WTF", with a delightfully violent reaction from

cypher - I hope your legs get cut off at the knee in a train wreck

The Vast fans at

realvast have a somewhat stronger reaction with comments like:

zooey - bet you're one of those women who wants history to be changed to herstory, too.

synthesizor - Gender Studies... give me a break. i'm sure that's a booming industry.

chaoset - Get out of the godsdamned 60's/70's. Feminism is a dead scene. We already know you're a "person."

lizzie9208 - Don't you have some laundry to do or something? A pie to bake? Something more productive than spamming every single community you're in because you're a hypocritical moron?

xveinsofglassx - Heh, if you look at her other icons, one is a devil with her tits showing and I looked through her journal for the hell of it and found this statement....

"I showed my breasts to a roadie to get backstage at a show"

Now please explain to me how that is acceptable and not degrading at all when a lame fucking commercial has her soiling her panties in rage.

david - People that get offended more often than not deserve it. Open your mind, fuck political correctness.

synthetichair Don't really care, but

mizsyn wins that thread with I think you need some chocolate ;)

Because it's not a proper wank without

conuly, she shows up in

tbm for a little first amendment wank

Next into the fray (or possibly not, I'm doing this alphabetically) is

tshirt_surgery, where there's a rape wank and lots of douches. Or douching, possibly.

_n1qu3_, despite having never seen the advert in question, thinks the letter is a brilliant idea.

Finally,

wolfsheim_fans, where there are many feminists who just don't care, and

spooky_chan who doth spake - shut off your fucking TV, change your icon if you want to be super fem, and start talking Wolfsheim. No one forces you to watch the fucking TV. Besides, commercials are an insult to humanity its self, not just women.

WOLFSHEIM DAMNIT, talk about wolfsheim!

Now, that's it for the communities spammed, but

kiddeternity didn't much like the negative reaction to her letter, so she posted the following in her LJ -

I <3 getting flamed. (That's satire).

1. I DO care about women being raped. In Sudan, and here. I am one of them. (Not in the Sudan, obviously).
2. I DO have self-esteem issues. Mostly from being told, passively and aggressively in the media, that I'm nuts.
3. If you allow little things to slide, it allows for bigger things to happen. I believe that, and I stand by it.
4. I don't think only women sew. And I don't think only women give a shit about women's issues. And media representation is a woman's issue. Moreover, it's an American women's issue, because we seem to be one of few nations that think shit like this is OK.
5. I DO get offended by commercials representing men as buffoons. But I'm not a man, I'm a woman, so the Hershey's one hit closer to home.
6. I HAVE responded to things which I found degrading that were closer to home. I live in Tallahassee, the capital of Florida, if not in the buckle of the bible belt, in at least one of the belt loops.
7. I didn't ask to stir up controversy, I just asked for help in getting an ad pulled. If you disagree, don't e-mail. I posted in communities I'm part of because I felt that there would be at least one person who agreed with me who might be interested in helping it out. Hence my title of "Off Topic".

Just a portion of responses I won't address person by person.....ahh, the rudeness of cyberspace.

And the spammees come visiting. Notable among the >60 comments would be the minor flamefest between the overinvested

lizzie9208 and

2sixteen, and the wtfness of

patient_0 in this thread (examples include "as for her icon, you'll notice that it revels in the power of a truly feminine body type" and "In short, go fuck yourself sterile, because you obviously have nothing to contribute."). The thread also includes big graphics, accusations of being emo, and invocation of a

jurisimprudence law that I can't quite remember the name of.

But it's not over yet! Because way back in

tbm, there was a reply that someone thought worthy of a metaquote. Cue lots of people agressively Not Caring - some Not Caring enough to make several long comments.

vaspider lets us know (with big words, no less!) that spending time pointing and laughing at someone for wasting their time is incredibly ironic. I'm in the metaquotes thread, but I don't think it's enough to turn it into

i_wank material.

Page 1 of 2
<<	[1] [2]	>>

(Post a new comment)

	reinhardt 2005-05-06 07:07 pm UTC (link)
	I think I saw that commercial. Do I have to turn in my feminist membership card because I don't find it offensive at all. Kind of stupid but hardly offensive. (Reply to this)(Thread)