Torontoist’s Johnnie Walker has a great piece on the Canadian Club campaign and its obvious homophobic overtones:

It’s also hard not to view the campaign as somewhat homophobic. The “YOUR DAD WAS NOT A METROSEXUAL” ad seems to basically say, “your Dad wasn’t a gay, but you probably are if you don’t buy Canadian Club.” Guess what, Canadian Club? Most of our Dads aren’t gay. This is not news. One would hope that our Dads’ likely heterosexuality is not the most interesting thing about them.

The comments section is packed with your usual “calm down” and “relax, it’s only an ad” offerings, but also some fantastic spoofs, like this one.

For Shameless discussions on Canadian Club, click here and here.

Dove’s still keepin’ it real, and by real I mean an unrealistic, retouched kind of real.

Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ Pics Could Be Big Phonies?

In a May 12 profile in The New Yorker posted online, Pascal Dangin of New York’s Box Studios is quoted as saying he extensively retouched photos used in the Campaign for Real Beauty, which, if true, could seriously undermine an effort that already has subjected Unilever to considerable consumer and activist backlash in recent months.

The best quote of all?

“I mentioned the Dove ad campaign that proudly featured lumpier-than-usual ‘real women’ in their undergarments,” wrote Lauren Collins in the New Yorker article. “It turned out that it was a Dangin job. ‘Do you know how much retouching was on that?’ he asked. ‘But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.’”

This comes after Dove has maintained there was no retouching done to the images. Their response is that Pascal Dangin is a liar.

The Shameless Blog has talked extensively about the controversy behind this campaign, namely the hypocrisy of an “accept yourself as you are” and “beware unrealistic marketing” ad hook produced by the same company that brings us female sex slave imagery. Again, it seems that accepting yourself the way you are still involves a lot of retouching.

“No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.” Um, yah.

Spirit is Canada’s leading Aboriginal magazine, featuring cutting edge material from the Native community across the country.

This current publication is their very first SEX issue and I am so darn excited and happy that it exists. The beautiful young woman you see on the cover is none other than Métis burlesque extraordinaire Veronika Swartz, photographed by the Über talented Ojibwe photographer Nadya Kwandibens.

Within these pages you will read some of the most progressive and provocative literary masterpieces as they pertain to sex and sexuality. The sweet essence of breaking down social taboos will linger in your mind as you are drawn into the demystifying truths of how beautiful and sacred sex really is in the Indigenous world. What remains is pride and ownership over our own bodies (a concept we actually started!)

It moves me to tears to know that we are taking back what has been exploited so harshly from us and letting it out now on our own terms. And it’s a pretty powerful thing.

Exposed and in control? I want to be too!

According to the United Nations, human trafficking is now the third most lucrative criminal enterprise in the world, after weapons and narcotics.

This week’s New Yorker has a piece about a woman in Moldova who works as a repatriation specialist, bringing home the victims of human trafficking. Some of it makes for harrowing reading, but there are also these incredible shows of strength and determination - strength that I can’t imagine holding onto after what some of these women have been through.

It’s also amazing to read about what this organization - called the International Organization for Migration - has achieved, sometimes even tracking down women who call them with no idea what country they’ve been taken to.

Maybe Disney should take a long hard look at who’s to blame for hyper-sexualizing young women.

I mean really, it’s Myley Cyrus in a bedsheet Disney’s worried about? I think a child reclining in a push-up bra is worse…

Slate has more.

Via Feministing.

I’ve been a little wary of comedians since one I gave a mediocre write-up to last year accused me of being a lesbian with no sense of humour.

I worry about this trend in comedy lately of stand-ups trying to be as “edgy” and close to the bone as possible. Nobody wants to own up to their discomfort for fear of looking like a bad sport.

I feel like it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. British comedian Johnny Vegas dragged a woman in her late teens up on stage last week and groped her breasts without consent, in an “act” that sounds like it went on for a good few minutes. Nobody intervened when he started pulling up her skirt, even though she tried to pull it back down again, and nobody intervened when he climbed on top of her and started kissing her. Everyone just sat and watched the whole thing unfold, until finally the opening comedian came on stage and covered them both with his coat.

The article above doesn’t mince words in its condemnation of Vegas, but other reviews of the set have expressed only mild discomfort, or praised Vegas to the skies for his genius in making his middle class audience uncomfortable. I’m basically too outraged for words.

“Are you trying to find naked pictures of Miley Cyrus?” asked my girlfriend yesterday, glancing at my Google image search results. Needless to say, I wasn’t. I was trying to find those Vanity Fair photos to judge this ridiculous controversy myself.

Today I think I’ve got a better handle on the whole thing, thanks to Nancy Gruver’s post on Stockholm Syndrome in the Media. Gruver has done a lot of thinking on girls in the media. She’s the founder and CEO of New Moon, a fabulous feminist magazine for girls. Here’s her perspective:

Girls are barraged by sexualized images all around them and everyone they come into contact with in daily life is also surrounded by those images. The images viscerally teach “the importance of being sexy” if you are female. The images teach all of us that acting sexy is how girls/women can have power without being rejected as domineering or bitchy (see media coverage of Hillary Clinton for the way “non-sexy” female power is conveyed).

Now imagine the extreme confusion girls feel when they are surrounded by images promoting the power of female sexiness and at the same time are told that it’s bad for girls to be interested in sex, to act sexy themselves, to dress sexy, etc. The real message being conveyed, of course, is that girls shouldn’t want to be powerful.

Usually, I barely follow this sort of stuff. Bubblegum pop stars are well below my notice. But if I have to watch another young woman be eaten by the celebrity gossip/entertainment industry machine, I might just cry.

This interesting article from the Courier Mail in Australia was sent to me recently.

Here’s a nice little snippet:

PRESCHOOL girls are being targeted with sexed-up dolls, which could create a generation of teenagers who hate themselves, experts say.

She said the dolls’ “fishnet stockings, tight-fitting clothes, high heels and heavily made-up faces and large pouty lips” exposed little girls to dangerous stereotypes.

Now I’ve always been of the mindset that we cannot leave it up to the media and pop culture to be the sole forms of education for our children, however I have been noticing the shift in the appearance of toys like Bratz dolls.

I would also hope that the ability to teach self and social confidence would trump materialistic followings like toys, or even better make people empowered in their own sexuality while wearing things like “fishnet stockings, tight-fighting clothes, etc”.

I could never find a Barbie that looked like me anyway.

What say you? Can we really blame toys for the oversexualization that has occurred in mainstream society?

Naomi Alderman finds something to love about the new Grand Theft Auto in The Guardian today, debunking claims that it is “horrifically violent, verging on pornographic, and that a majority of the gameplay is taken up with finding creative ways to murder prostitutes.” Her own enjoyment of the game, she says, come from the incredible graphics and the quality of the gameplay.

Okay, fair enough, but the object of the game is still to shoot people and win gang wars, right? I find it hard to fathom why so many intelligent people insist on defending this game, whose major appeal I once heard summarized as, “you can sleep with a prostitute and then shoot her so you don’t have to pay.”

Creative, indeed.