Germany’s New Ads for Rubbers: Use Condoms or Make A Hitler, The Choice is Yours

I mean, yes we ALL MUST WRAP IT UP and clearly the message isn’t being heard, given the soaring rates of HIV infections around the world. So what does Germany do? Try to scare the hell out of you to not raw dog it by conjuring up emotions of guilt, oppression and mass extinction: Don’t bring the next Hitler into the world. Use a condom.

Slate blogger Willa Paskin writes: A truly astounding series of German condom advertisements are making the rounds this morning—each features a sketch of a sperm made to look like Adolf Hitler, Osama Bin Laden or Mao Zedong. Their not so subtle message being, “Better wrap it up… unless you want to bring evil into the world!” The ads are arresting and hilarious, but the self-flagellation inherent in them strikes me as being distinctly German: I can’t imagine many American dudes susceptible to the suggestion that their sperm wear swastikas, or, to use a more purely American parallel, KKK outfits. (Obviously, their sperm have 90 mile an hour fastballs, good looks and a working familiarity with the art of the deal). It’s a dark take on procreation, informed by an everyday awareness that people can go really, really bad. Of course, people can go good as well, and I almost expect to see these images re-purposed for an anti-condom or pro-life campaign, with sperm made to look like Jesus, Abe Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr.

What ever happened to just showing pictures of the woman with the cauliflower vagina or the man with bumpy penis to “remind” people of the dangers of unprotected sex? Why you gotta go and get all “George W. Weapons of Mass Destruction” with it? Why you gotta get all Schlinder’s List on it? Now I gotta to worry about HIV and carrying in my womb the next HORRENDOUS murderous dictator who is capable of blowing up things and killing people for fun? C’mon now.

The ads are slightly funny, but a mess nonetheless.

See the rest here.

 

We Get It! Smoking Is Bad For You, But Is This PSA Really Necessary?

If you live in New York and have been in any subway station (BK’s Atlantic Avenue Stop) or been at home kicking it enjoying reruns of The Wire, you have been unexpectedly hit with New York City Department of Health’s new ad campaign to stop folks from puffing on cancer sticks: Maria and her missing fingers.

See below:

There are two other commercials like this as well.

According to the Health Department, Marie developed Buerger’s disease, a condition that narrows arteries reducing blood flow to the arms and legs. She has lost parts of most fingers, as well as a leg and a part of one foot. Her man also left her because he couldn’t take it anymore.

I do hope that Mayor Bloomberg tricked her off some of his billions or promised to pay her rent for the rest of her natural life, because that is the only way the kid would have put herself on blast like this.

I mean fear tactics are so post/911 circa 2005. They don’t work with the masses. (Me on the other hand they work for sure, I am scared of everything.) People don’t care about their bodies, if they did they wouldn’t cook greens in LARD or eat at Chipotle. So if you think that hardcore smokers give a damn about amputated fingers, bone clippers, holes in their throat, second-hand smoke giving their kids asthma or the threat of being single, you’re nuts.

But people are terrified of you messing with their money.

So here is my thought: Make cigarettes expensive as hell. A pack of Marlboro Lights in New York is already high at $8.50. I say make it $20. And with this recession in full effect, folks will have to choose between light bills or cigarettes, gas or smokes, food or trees.

Now that would be a kick ass PSA. Maria’s kids on television saying that their mother’s addiction was so bad that she used up their college fund because she just “needed to light up after sex.”

Maybe just shaming folks would work.

SHOUTOUT: To my friend Nicole L. who is missing a finger due to a childhood accident, not smoking, although she does smoke.  This post does not pertain to your situation–your missing finger is how i say, “Freaky sexy!”

 

When Publishing Goes Too Far…Miley Cyrus in Vanity Fair

(Disclaimer: I know that everyone is talking about Miley Cyrus. So when in Rome…)

Hannah Montana megastar Miley Cyrus is doing damage control by apologizing for her recent photo spread in Hollywood culture bible Vanity Fair for a semi-nude picture of her taken by famed photographer Annie Lebowtiz. Cyrus claims she was manipulated by Lebowitz while Lebowitz is giving the “bitch please” defense claiming that everyone was happy and approved of the art including Cyrus and her parents.

Lebowitz also stated that people are misinterpreintg her work. So tell me this: When is it ever appropriate for an artist to suggest that a 15-year old girl pose shirtless while being wrapped in sheet rocking just-got-f***ed hair? Never. Shame on Lebowitz for not knowing better, for not falling back for a second and thinking to herself “Now I got critisized for the Jennifer Hudson Vogue spread last year for making her look like a lifeless whale, I got really shit on for the LeBron James-Gisele Bundchen Vogue cover for reinforcing stereotypes of black men being primitive apes…so maybe I should be easy with this little girl and do something that will keep my name out of the news.” Or maybe this was her plan all along.

But regardless of the intent, we as a society cannot forget that although Cyrus may have Julia Roberts’ money, she is still a child.

Now I respect Vanity Fair, but it doesn’t get a pass because it’s Vanity Fair, just like Lebowitz doesn’t get a pass because she is one of the best photographers of the 21st century. A foul up is a foul up and they need to stop hiding behind art’s sake and man up. This picture whether splashed on a MySpace page or on the cover of Time is equally problematic.

And I know that people are saying, “Where were the parents? They should have been there.” Who knows where they were, but if they weren’t there, shame on them for trusting a capitalist magazine to have their daughter’s best interest in mind. Now if they were there and they didn’t say anything, this could be a product of one of two things. Either they don’t give a damn like Lindsay Lohan’s mom aka White Oprah OR they got caught up in the moment listening to elitist folks telling these hillbillies, they don’t know fine art and that this is what is people really want to see. It’s this same mentality that got Andre Leon Talley to talk Jennifer Hudson into wearing that hideous gold lamet shrug-thing at the Oscars in 2007. You keep telling someone, “You’re great, you’re fabulous, give it to the camera. this is what’s up” and POOF! You have a child in tears, embarrassed parents, Disney with their panties in a twist and a major corporation i.e. Conde Nast making millions off of the fallout.

Yet this one incident speaks to a larger problem in this country: the sexualization of young women at way too early of an age. There are 10 year-olds wearing thongs and getting Brazilian waxes along with high schoolers who give better head than Karrine Steffans. We have music videos with naked women having money thrown on them, reality shows with spoiled brats who will do anything for attention, ads like House of Dereon For Girls pimping 3 year olds in f**k-me pumps, commercials like CW ‘s Gossip Girl showing kids riding each other, movies like Superbad that display a teen character begging some dork to put his “cock” in her, the list could go on and on.

Do we have any idea what we are doing to the psyches of young girls in this country? We are telling them that being overtly sexual is more important than being articulate, or being goofy or being smart or being REAL. We are encouraging girls to engage in sexual activities that they are not mentally or emotionally ready for and all we can offer them is abstinence-only education, so they have no idea how to protect themselves. Then we wonder why one in four teen girls has an STD. And parents are just as messed up as the media–stop being your kid’s homegirl and be her mamma.

We have fallen pop stars, knocked up teen idols and hairless vaginas plastered in every magazine. And when young girls finally have someone they can look up to, we ruin it by letting greed take over common sense and decency. Oh well, VF will get what it wanted: to sell more copies than Suri “Alien” Cruise’s debut and Jennifer Aniston “Boo-hoo Brad left me” issues combined. I hope it was all worth it.

 

When Advertising Goes Too Far: House of Dereon for Girls

I know that I am late on this one, but these damn House of Dereon ads really irk the hell out of me.

I don’t know about you, but the words “fuck me pumps” and “pre-schoolers” do not need to go together in the same sentence.

Tina, we understand that you had to pimp out your daughter at a young age in order to make her a star and bring money into the home. Without that sacrifice, “bootylicious” might never have made it into the American vernacular. So for that we are truly grateful, but this boo, is a disgrace. These little girls look like whores. Why all the lipstick?

What is the next ad going to look like? Babies wearing gold metallic bikinis while five-year old boys throw Monopoly money on them.

Let our children be damn children atleast ’till the age of 8. Then they can worry about bikini waxes and putting out.

I am not blaming Bey and her Creole mama for the raising rates in pedophilia in this country, but this mess definitely doesn’t help.