This ad is grotesque, but what's even more gross is the attitude of the editor @ the Prairie Dog.

Sigh...

I can't believe people would actually think this is funny and still assert they're not playing into the objectification of women. Here's a newsflash: you can't simultaneously make fun of something, and engage in it! We call that "hypocrisy."

Jesus people...

What irks me is whenever feminists critique an image "non-feminists" cry censorship. This ad is gross & I would love if it didn't exist but that doesn't mean I'm calling for censorship.

I wonder how many ads/images/media of this kind it would take to normalize the "third-boob operation" into society.

If men are as "boob-obsessed" as they claim to be (I think they aren't; they're just woman-part-obsessed, which is importantly different. One involves finding a body part fun or interesting, the other involves objectifying women by breaking them down into parts), why aren't they attracted to man-boobs? I would like to see commercials of men with implants, and let's see if men retain their professed love of boobs.

My prediction: the ads will TANK, this proving it is not boobs that men are obsessed with, but rather objectifying women that they are obsessed with.

Yes, pisaquari! Complete with commercials that show beaming, skinny white women saying things like "I'm doing it for me!" and "Because I'm worth more!"

As to the argument that this is a "satire":

There are two separate ways to make fun of something - you can satirize it, or you can roast it. A satire implicitly condemns the activity in question, and while it results in laughs, it also seeks change. Stephen Colbert, for example, satirizes right wing newscasters.

For a roast, you poke fun at something's foibles, but fundamentally, you approve. When Hef goes to the Friar's Club, they make fun of him, but at the end of the day, he's laughing along with them.

This is a roast of objectifying beer commercials. It points out that the tits/beer comparison is funny, but doesn't seek to undermine it.

Mikey, WELL PUT.

Incidentally, as the politics n' poetry site points out, Bacardi is behind the "betterthanbeer" campaign, and in addition to voicing disappointment / outrage with the other offending parties, it's wise to comment to Bacardi as well (who may, if nothing else, respond to threatened / actual withdrawal of consumer support). Sadly, this is the angle I now take in my comments to corporate offenders, rather than attempting to educate them on the finer points of the patriarchy. And I've never heard of this Prairie Dog magazine or its editor, but it never ceases to amaze me how women are so consistently told they shouldn't be offended by something, and if they are, they are "humorless" or "self-righteous". No other oppressed group is still handed that crap...no one would dare.

Moxie:

What irks me is whenever feminists critique an image "non-feminists" cry censorship. This ad is gross & I would love if it didn't exist but that doesn't mean I'm calling for censorship.

When "politicsnpoetry" wrote "Surely, the Dog has come further than that!", she was in fact calling for the Prairie dog to not run that advertisement (i.e. censor the ad out of their adstream).

Setting aside the problem of the editor not understanding the sexism involved, there is an interesting underlying question: the Prairie Dog has apparently built a business model around accepting advertisements in a batch without being able to exert any significant editorial control over individual ones, and I am wondering whether or not that's considered an acceptable business model for a progressive magazine here. The answers I am seeing imply to me that people think it is not, but I have to consider it a very poor trade to lose a source of consistently progressive writing to avoid occasionally offensive ads.

As an interesting followup, for those that may have missed it, it was mentioned in passing that the ad was ordered pulled nationwide by the Canadian Advertising Standards Council.

Zed, you make thoughtful points and it strikes me that the publication's actual "progressive" status may be questionable if indeed it, and its editor, don't "get it" when it comes to feminist points of view and material that is offensive to women...and who are as markedly defensive as less "progressive" sources are. As many feminist authors point out, it's abandonment by so-called allies that often stings more than, or at least as much as, the initial perpetration of an oppressive act. Again, I've never read the PD, so am doing my best to frame this in the abstract...although the editor's tone in his comments may say it all.

Just a definitional point here -- I'm not sure that it counts as "censorship" to decide not to run something in a publication *you* put out. That is to say, if PD decides it does not want to run the ad because it is sexist and objectifies women, how is this "censorship"?? In my mind, "censorship" is when the government tells people that there are things that they *may not* say. If the makers of this ad want to run it in their own publication, or in "publications" friendly to this type of distorted Maxim, I'm unaware of anyone telling them they *cannot* do this. And note that telling people they should not say something is not the same as telling them they may not say it.

Good points all around, Law Fairy!

It should also qualify as hate speech:

Hate speech is a controversial term for speech intended to degrade, intimidate, or incite violence or prejudicial action against a person or group of people based on their race, gender, age, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, moral or political views, etc. The term covers written as well as oral communication.

When "politicsnpoetry" wrote "Surely, the Dog has come further than that!", she was in fact calling for the Prairie dog to not run that advertisement (i.e. censor the ad out of their adstream).
That doesn't mean the ad would cease to exist. I think she was just shocked that such an ad would appear in a "progressive" magazine & is questioning its place in the publication.
And in some debates that I've participated in, merely critiquing an ad has been viewed as censorship by some conservatives. It's mind-boggling & frankly, getting old. Pointing & crying "Censorship! Censorship!" is getting old.

Charity:

Again, I've never read the PD, so am doing my best to frame this in the abstract...although the editor's tone in his comments may say it all.

I'm in the same boat with respect to the actual content of the PD, but I'm basing my guess that the PD is in fact a progressive publication both on the comment by "politicsnpoetry" and on the editor's complaint that the PD gets a lot of flak from the conservative side for running the John Conway column (whoever he is -- I assume it's not the mathematician, which is the only famous John Conway I know of, but it may be a Canadian personality that gets no U.S. coverage). I'm actually inclined to give the editor a lot of leeway over his tone, given that he was responding to aspersions on his character and his magazine's character in a way that was obviously touching a prior nerve -- I mostly just want to slap him upside the head for continuing even after the thread had cooled a little to attempt to get people to say that there's nothing inherently sexist about the ad. (Hello? Extra attention to a third breast as the main reason to make the woman "better than beer"? The woman herself is apparently only important because she can bring her extra breast along as an alternative to beer and he still doesn't get it?) Cluelessness on the part of the editor doesn't necessarily imply cluenessness on the part of his writers, though.

Odd to see this ad posted, since it's been months since it made its brief appearance here in Canada (and was subsequently

I wasn't too surprised to see it running in the weekly papers here in Toronto. Though free weekly papers in Canada generally skew leftward editorially, I consider their advertising support another matter entirely, and full-page ads from big corporations are not unusual. And it's not like these publications (Prairie Dog included) are outright pinko commie rags or anything -- just more leftminded and critical than the media establishment. So I wouldn't hold them up as a paragon of feminism.

I was pretty grossed out by the ad on a visual level and I think the satirical aspect (for what it's worth) is quite ironically lost on its intended audience, so that's a cop-out. But I actually think of this as a heartening success story: the ad was published (and postered locally), people complained, and it was quickly pulled. It sort of restores my faith in the Advertising Standards Council, and I think it's a meaningful aspect of the story that being glossed over here.

This ad is just weird. My chest feels funny looking at it.

It also makes me think of that old joke where God creates Eve first and gives her three boobs. When She asks Eve if there is anything She should change, Eve says that she could do without the middle tit. So, God took the third boob and made Adam.

This ad seems to to prove the joke: only a real boob of a dude would come up with this crap and call its critics "censors."

Zed,

Again, thoughtful commentary on my post...and you're right that the editor's position does not necessarily reflect the writers'. However, I'm actually NOT inclined to give the editor that much leeway re: his tone (in his initial reply to her, which is what I meant), at minimum because as the editor of a publication (and this goes for any publication, whether left- or right-leaning or anything in between), you should realistically anticipate hearing from readers about your choices and the product you are putting out, and you should be expected to respond in a mature and professional manner, whether or not a reader's comment touches a "prior nerve."

The critic of the ad was not unreasonable or inappropriately inflammatory in her email...she offered her honest reaction to the ad and said she expected better from the publication (which is a compliment). She did not attack the editor's character. His reply was invalidating and patronizing with phrases such as "I'm not at all convinced," "a lot of people would find it funny," and "that's hardly a reason..." And, of course there's the bottom line of (and I think we agree here), how can a man claim to know more about what is "sexist" or offensive to women than a WOMAN DOES? And yet, so many believe they have this authority...

As for the editor's tone in the blog comments...he lost all credibility with me when he referred to her reaction as "self-righteous." Folks who aren't feminist-friendly (that's a euphemism) have been hiding behind that term for a long, long time.

I appreciate your willingness to engage in this dialogue.

Hate Speech applies to "Political Affiliation"?

Why isn't Ann Coulter in jail then?

New commenter here, so be gentle, folks :)

I actually did see the ad as a satire on overly sexual advertising / breast obsessed men / breast obsessed culture. Maybe I was assigning the best of intentions to the advertisers where that wasn't due (and given Bacardi's other history mentioned here and at the original blog site, perhaps that was unwise). A shame if that's true; we could do with more criticism of objectifying ads.

Mikey makes an excellent and interesting point about satire vs roasting, which is something to ponder, but I think the point should be made that good satire is frequently taken both ways, because people don't always get it. I was actually going to use Colbert as an example before Mikey did, but it's even better now: I'm told by a relative who lives in the south that some of her workmates who lap up O'Riley et al actually don't get that Colbert is being satirical, they take him at face value. I can only assume they're not the sharpest tools in the shed, as Colbert shows his amusement constantly, but he does do it without ever coming out of his persona.

Context can sometimes be important, too. If a thoughtful cartoonist like, say, Leunig drew a cartoon of a three-breasted woman entitled Better Than Beer, no-one would doubt that he was making a commentary on society and did not mean it literally.

Given different interpretations of a single work, the comment above on hate speech just reinforces my personal unease at such legislation. If the work is a satire, then it's only degrading if misunderstood. If it's supposed to be taken literally (ugh), then women presumably aren't its intended audience at all, so no intent to humiliate directly, and it's not exactly an incitement to violence.

Anyway, enjoying the blog, which I discovered last night after following a link from... somewhere. Ain't the blogosphere great? :)

This is repulsive, but the breast-frog mashup is more so.

And personally I'm not obsessed with breasts. Buttocks, oh callipygian glory! that is my obsession.

Uhh, I've seen several of the "better than beer" ads around (I live in Toronto), and the ads aren't meant to say that the thing in the picture is better than beer. For example, there's a picture of a squirrel with three nuts, and a picture of a...well...mildly chubby, really hairy guy wearing nothing but a speedo, doing a body-builder pose with drawn on abs. Definately not selling with sex.

The idea is to have a strange image which draws your attention, and a name which tells you nothing about what the thing is selling (Bacardi).

i dont know what you guys are talkin about, this is fuckin awesome! i wish all women understood the power that nice titties have. in fact, im going to go look for sum good porn of this woman.