Stinky

The Gruen Transfer did a great segment last night on deoderant advertising. It was made more interesting by the fact I was sitting in a lounge room with my mother and boyfriend. Both of them think that ads like this one are a hearty laugh. I'm in the category of people who find them seriously discomforting.

Television has a way of creating meaning through a kind of synechdoche - when someone on Home and Away 'kisses' their friend's boyfriend, I implicitly assume this is the PG version of them doing the nasty on the kitchen table. If you accept that consumers know this, then you can understand why I see the "spot and stare" ads Brut is currently crapping out as a blatant incitement to pack rape. If you think this is some sort of "feminist overreaction" then you've clearly never been alone in an isolated area and had a car full of people, each of whom is around 50% larger than you, leering and jeering at you. The 'implied threat' is not subtle.

In any case, I digress from the main subject of this rant, which is that those tits-and-ass ads for Lynx, featuring content such as the following:

are actually the product of a large multinational firm - Unilever. No surprises there, you may say.

However, consider that within the stable of Unilever brands is another brand of supermarket deoderant and beauty products pitched at a different segment of the market. Do you remember that wildly successful "Dove beauty" campaign? If you don't here's a brief recap:

If you ever had an inkling that perhaps these campaigns were based on a sense of social obligation any deeper than someone trying to sell you shit, think again.

If you have a problem with Lynx putting this kind of shit on your TV, I suggest you point this out to as many of your female friends as you are able. And if you ever see a bloke buying Brut in a supermarket, wave your pinky finger at him for me.