and ain't i a woman?: Another form of selling with sex
I was sitting around the television a few weeks ago with my flatmates. A cheer went up as a new advert came on: the camera slowly pans up a corridor; there are footprints and piles of clothing leading to the bed; two women are heard moaning; two pairs of women's feet are seen entwining on the bed covers; the camera moves up their bodies — and the cheer turns to disbelief. The two are sharing the latest issue of Cleo and its feature on the world's 50 most eligible bachelors!
The women's and sexual liberation movements in the '60s won concrete improvements such as law reform and better services, but also an increased acceptance of the rights of women, lesbians and gay men. As a result of those struggles, it is less acceptable today to be sexist or homophobic and more acceptable to use images of strong women or lesbians in the mainstream media.
Previously invisible and suppressed forms of sexuality and sex roles have forced their way onto our TV screens. But the advertising companies don't use these images to further break down sexism or homophobia. They use them to make money.
In the latest Bonds ad, a man steals away in his lover's T-shirt, while she is sleeping, to see another woman. Woman Two then steals the T-shirt while he is sleeping, and Woman One has to crack onto her to get it back. In typical form, the two women don't even kiss, and of course Woman One resorts to lesbianism only to get back at the man.
Big business has identified a new market in the lesbian and gay scene. It uses lesbian imagery to encourage sympathetic people to "buy for liberation". Selected images are coopted and used crudely to increase profits. But they are never allowed to get too far.
A clear sign that liberation is still a long way off is the form in which they are used. The new Geena Davis movie, A Long Kiss Goodnight, has Davis playing a government assassin, more deadly with a big gun or a knife than any male counterpart. But the sweaty and blood-soaked Davis is excused from resorting to un-ladylike violence because of a maternal impulse triggered when someone kidnaps her daughter. Lesbian images are similarly distorted, limited and sanitised.
As any advertising agent will tell you, "Sex sells!". They want to get our attention, and these sorts of ads do that. But the safety catch clicks in at the last moment, and we're all supposed to sigh with relief that the two Cleo readers aren't really one of them after all. Lesbianism is presented as something that women play with, always returning to the safe folds of heterosexuality.
Meanwhile, the deluge of Meadow Lea and ANZ happy, heterosexual, traditional sex role ads continues unabated. And all the "lesbians" used in the ads are typically thin and beautiful, with long flowing hair.
Now the government is reasserting "family values" and the need to get women back into their "traditional" roles. These celluloid snippets of a more liberated sexuality are at best an aberration. Instead of cheering, or resting on our laurels, or expecting this to lead to better things, we should turn with renewed vigour to campaigning for women's rights, for freedom of sexuality and for real liberation.
By Marina Carman