The first item was Fox Sports' and Burger King's animated jab at Jessica Simpson's weight. See for yourself here. The video was shown during Fox's coverage of NFL football.
Put aside the fact that the spot is genuinely unfunny, regardless of the subject matter. Also put aside the fact that, although the sketch attempts to demean Simpson's physique, she is probably in much better shape than approximately 99% of the males who viewed the sketch when it originally aired.
Frankly, I don't care for Simpson in the slightest when it comes to her talents as an entertainer. The idea that she is by some measure overweight is, by any objective standard, laughable. Yet the premise of this sketch, and countless tabloid reports of Simpson and other female celebrities, is that a woman's worth as a human being is drawn heavily - almost exclusively - from her ability to remain a certain weight.
The second item was Pepsi's release of an iPhone application called, "AMP up before you Score." The tie-in to Pepsi's AMP energy drink portends to give men pointers on how to "score" with different categories of women, from "Sorority Girl" to "Married Woman." The packaging is sleek and the technology cutting edge, but here again, women are given value only for their ability to satisfy the sexual desires of men.
I realize fully that Pepsi intended the app as a "joke," as did Fox and Burger King with their sketch. I also realize that Pepsi today pulled the app, and that Fox and BK apologized. The cynic would say that either move seems hollow, as the surrounding publicity has already achieved the intended PR/brand awareness objective manifold. (Sidenote: #Pepsifail is a fascinating case study in the role of social media in brand management.)
I like to think I was always so sensitive to these kinds of degrading exploitations. Fact is, I probably wasn't, at least not to this degree. Perhaps chalk it up to being the father of two beautiful little girls, and shuddering at the prospect of what they may have to deal with in a dozen short years. The lesson that beauty is skin deep while eternal value lay inside is timeless, but not easily taught or learned.
At first, I thought the lesson here is that the feminist movement, while making strides in proponents' political and legal aims, still has its work cut out in the cultural arena. That may be, but the greater lesson here was actually revealed last week when the nation held its breath watching an odd-looking experimental balloon careen across the Colorado sky, hoping the assumed six-year-old passenger would make it out in one piece, only to find out it was a hoax.The commonality between the genuinely odd Falcon Heene saga and the continuing degradation of women is wonderfully expressed in the words of a commentary in Thursday's Wall Street Journal: We're all Balloon Boys Now.
When women are reduced to a weight or a conquest - or, pick any other humiliation of women or men - it is natural to decry the lack of respect in society. This is incorrect, or at least incomplete. At its core, what we have is a reality problem. We just don't know what's real anymore. In a culture where even the "poor" have several hundred cable channels, the lines between entertainment and news are becoming extinct, and television personalities are revered cultural icons, and issues of right or wrong are left to matters of perspective, reality takes a decidedly subjective bent.
We are obsessed with unplugging, "vegging," and immersing in an alternative reality because we are unhappy with our own. We feel uncomfortable calling anything wrong less often for the high-minded reason of moral objectivity, and more often because we just don't know any better. Eventually, this leads us to act in a manner similar to Richard and Mayumi Heene, according to the reality we believe others will want to watch. In other words, we act by what we think is expected of us.
If we can't distinguish what's real, we have no hope of viewing our fellow man for what they are: beings created in a Magnificent Image. Instead, we see them through a convoluted prism of how we believe we should see them, and treat them accordingly. That's seldom good. We treat them as objects or commodities, not organic beings with genuine experiences and emotions that contribute to an objective reality known as the human condition. Meanwhile, objective reality continues its slow death.
You feel me?
AF
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