The image below, an ad for Target, has caused quite the stir on the internet. You know because, given that the U.S. has the highest rate of rape in the Western world, maybe it’s not a good idea to put a woman’s crotch on a bullseye. I’m just sayin’. And so are some other people (see a random selection here, here, here, and here in the New York Times). Well, Target took at least one of the images down. Click here to see the ad being taken down in Times Square. Notice that this is the second time this week that Sociological Images has been able to report that an outcry made a difference.
I’m actually willing to give Target the benefit of doubt on this one… that they didn’t really mean to try to titillate the viewer with fantasies of rape. But it is quite possible that they imagined that the ad might titillate the viewer with fantasies of sex. And making women a target for such fantasies, in itself, likely contributes to a rape culture, or a culture that facilitates the development of an orientation towards women as anonymous sexual objects that can be acquired, used, and disposed of. This ad does this, of course, no more than the countless other ads that do. In fact, I’d say that, save for the target, it’s actually a more benign ad than many. The target just, well, made it a target.
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Even if they did not ‘mean to try to titillate the viewer with fantasies of rape’, I think this ad tells us a lot about what their copywriter thinks is ‘cool’ and ‘getting to people’, and therefore - what is considered ‘cool’ and ‘getting to people’ in our culture. and drawing attention to this removes it from being so.
therefore, it does not matter much if it was a mistake.
Hmmm, this ad wouldn’t have struck me as such if I never read this blog. Maybe that’s just me.
Here’s the original post and context on Shaping Youth.org, and you can see by the 125+ comments, just about every angle and opinion has been covered from when I first wrote about it. http://www.shapingyouth.org/blog/?p=969
Ironically, it’s now become a ‘textbook case’ in social media (not to mention a life lesson for me) because I now use it in media literacy sessions with teens for critical thinking skills, rotating imagery in ‘would it have been different if…(fill in the blank) mode.
Needless to say, depending what you put in that target, the sociological implications elicit various responses and ‘aha’ moments.