Rape jokes & Serena Williams’s big butt: this weekend in racism and sexism!

Apparently, Virgin Mobile US, thinks rape jokes really sell. Wait, I’m not being fair to them– they think rape jokes, or violence against women jokes or kidnapping or assault jokes sell. Check out this ad they released:

Hahahah. I get it! Is this man covering the woman’s eyes because he’s going to put a necklace on her? Or because he is going to cover her nose and mouth with something drenched in chloroform, the colorless, sweet-smelling, dense liquid, that is a toxic and potentially lethal anesthetic. Still laughing? At 6:45, Sunday morning, Everyday Sexism called out the rape-based holiday cheer hilarity, tweeting  “Please tweet @richardbranson@virgimobileus if you think using rape/domestic violence jokes to sell products isn’t ok pic.twitter.com/j9f4sRYv“. within two hours, Richard Branson, who no longer owns Virgin Mobile US, had actually responded (and posted a pensive-looking photo) on his Virgin.com blog, writing,

Having just seen, for the first time, the Virgin Mobile US advert which has upset many today, I agree it is ill-judged. Although I don’t own the company, it carries our brand. I will speak to the team there, make my thoughts clear and see what can be done about it. Virgin Mobile US usually get these things right, although on this occasion it is clear they have gone too far. Update: Update: Having spoken with them the team has confirmed this was a rogue post by an external agency that was not approved by Virgin Mobile US. They acknowledge a dreadful mistake was made. The advert, along with the whole calendar, has been removed, never to be seen again.

Hooray! A happy ending! A victory for feminists/ people who don’t like rape. Well, not quite. 

At 11:08 AM, @EverydaySexism tweeted this:

So, Virgin Mobile US did indeed take down the one creepy, predatory, Christmas-themed ad about rendering women unconscious. But they decided to replace it with another creepy, Christmas-themed, predatory ad about stalking women.

Finally, at 4:47 AM, Monday morning, almost 24 hours after originally notifying Richard and Virgin, @EverydaySexism tweeted, “UPDATE: Virgin have now removed the entire offensive feature, not just the single most offensive image!” Finally, it was gone. Phew.

Moving on. Saturday, at a tennis match against the blond-haired, Russian, white Maria Sharapova in Sao Paolo, Brazil, the blond-haired, Polish-Danish, white Caroline Wozniacki decided it would be really funny to make fun of the body of the African-American Serena Williams. She oh so cleverly inserted towels into her top and bottom, so it looked like she had bigger breasts and a bigger butt. Making fun of somebody’s body is inappropriate, sexist, offensive and problematic. But given the history and current-day context of racialized standards of beauty, and the hypersexualization of people of color, when a white woman makes fun of a black women’s body, especially in a way that hypersexualizes her and draws on the stereotype of black women’s big butts, it’s racist. Sadly, the audience and sportscasters didn’t responded to the impersonation by laughing, cheering and whistling. Maybe Everyday Sexism or someone else should start a twitter campaign to get Wozniacki to apologize. It worked for Virgen.