Because women are like dumb animals really

I’m not going to tell you where the Stepford-wife button is hidden on a woman; I wouldn’t want to deprive these great advertisers of your custom! But at last we can confirm that women are indeed unthinking breeding dolls who you can trick into sleeping with you if you just know the technique to dial into their dumb animal brains. I mean if you just use that seduction technique, they have to do it. Or if you find that blonde and do that one thing? Man, she’ll be like an alligator that you’ve turned on its back. And if they’re not just completely running on animal instinct after you do that thing the ad says—and I mean maybe you’re not the kind of guy who wants his woman to talk—they’ll beg to be your girlfriend, and you can just pick the hottest one!

Sex(ism) Sells

1. Only one?

This silly ad has been plaguing the right side of my email window for the last week:

Now, firstly, although that dress is quite distracting, I would still expect the copywriter, art director, forex-company guy, or someone, anyone, who saw this before publication to have noticed that ‘woman’ is in the singular. Is it just her who loves successful men (and is she bad with noun-verb agreement)? Do I have to be successful and track her down?

But secondly, are there not women who like to throw their money away on the finance markets? Must women also aspire to become successful men who are loved by woman?

2. 1st for really facile women

Maybe the dumbest cliche men have about women is that they are all really nuts about shoes and phones and chocolates. So when making an ad just for women, there’s no way an advertiser would just roll out that tired, lame generalisation. I mean, that would just be insul…

3. Oh, and hair and shopping

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the dumbest generalisation is that all women love shopping and having their hair done. I  could picture the guys in ‘Mad Men’ spitting this one out when they’re actively trying to insult their repressed, domesticated wives.

[Excuse the rubbish pic quality. The copy roughly translates as: ‘Until they make a doll-yourself-up trolley, you can rely on Go! Woman to get you through a rough day’].

4. Honourary mention: other kinds of women

Here’s another pathetic ad from my email provider, targeted to my specifically male needs:

I’m a man, so obviously I’d like to have all sorts of women on the side, and when I do, Casual Club will hook me up with, um, let’s see: married women, engaged women, single women and, uh… that’s all the marital statuses but I have this other block to fill… uh, women women? Slightly bored women, judging by the picture? Bored of being neither single nor married nor engaged women, perhaps? Maybe reading-a-book women?

Update: 2nd Bite at the Apple

The good people at gamble-on-forex have tried again with a reformat of their ad, and once again failed to notice any problems:

The new version also reveals that their model’s hair really does go on for ages. That must be quite a burden.