…or at least men’s sexual pleasure (found here via I Believe in Advertising).
Also, can I just say: Is it me or do these ads portray men’s sexual performance as sort of, just a little, maybe a bit, um, overly epic?
Also in exaggerating men’s sexual performance: sperm in space.
8 Comments
these ads kind of make me gag a little. gross.
I don’t see it as celebrating only men’s sexual pleasure nor that it had the intention to exaggerate male performance.
I just think that was a way to portray sex without showing it. And the exaggeration it has better reasons: it catches people’s eyes and it is less… real, and in that way less offensive. Also, you wouldn’t be able to get ejaculation looking so nice. The thing they used is more aesthetic them cum. I think that is why they did 3 different ads showing the same thing.
And another thing, it says “join the fun at condom08.com”. I tried accessing the site but it seems it doesn’t exist, but anyways, that ad might be related to male condoms, so that might be a reason for showing the ejaculation.
I think it is rather clever… the intersection of ejaculation and celebration portrayed in a champagne shower.
Exaggerated? Sure, but when doesn’t this kind of advertising try to capture imagination by stimulating it with larger-than-life images?
As you can tell from the tagline/website “condom08.com”, this was a campaign to encourage safe sex, i.e. condom use. The advert series as shown here is actually incomplete - the last photo in the series showed an upside down condom, stylized to look deceptively similar to a champagne glass. Plus, there was one more slide without a photo on it, with only the text encouraging you to celebrate sex. The entire series was shown together - I never saw them displayed one by one (I lived in Stockholm when this campaign ran).
I thought at the time that it was a clever and stylish way to campaign for increased condom use. After all, what condoms do is contain men’s ejaculate, so it is not necessarily wrong to focus on that particular aspect of sex in a condom advert. The link to champagne isn’t frivolous either - I always presumed it came after the tagline ‘celebrate sex’, with the operative link being celebration rather than the actual texture/nature of sperm.
kris-stella,
That’s interesting! The source where I found them did not include the fourth page. If you know where I can find it, please let us know and we’ll update the post.
The interesting point from my perspective is, that the kind of sexuality which is worthily to be celebrated seems to be the (hopefully heterosexual activated) bio-male ejaculation…finest old (really really old) school androcentrism!
That’s sad, because a lot of sexuality has no bio-penis-champagne-sperm-shower included, but it’s also very necessary to do it save (gloves for hands/fingers, condoms for dildos and any other kind of toys).
There was a picture very similar to these on the milk dispenser at the café where I used to work. Only upside down. And now I feel a little bit sick.
… really interesting looking at men’s ejaculate is something sick and gross. It’s part of men, right?