UPDATE: The billboard has been taken down
The website ArrangementFinders.com (NSFW) does pretty much what you think it does: it connects people who are looking to have sex. We’re not here to debate the merits of the site, because honestly, there’s a lot worse on the Internet. What we are here to challenge is this billboard, sitting in broad daylight at the intersection of Clark and Ontario in downtown Chicago, IL:
(via Red Eye Chicago)
The blurred-out effect is actually a part of the billboard, not something we’ve added on. But anyone over the age of 12 can probably figure out what’s being suggested here (even if they may not grasp the actual product being sold). And therein lies the problem. This isn’t some corner of the Internet or even an explicitly adult area of town – it’s a huge billboard in downtown Chicago where young girls and boys walk by all the time.
In fact, Red Eye Chicago reports that this same block includes Portillo’s, Rainforest Cafe and a Rock ‘n’ Roll McDonald’s. And that this exact billboard location previously displayed an advertisement displaying the aforementioned McDonald’s french fries.
Now it’s telling the thousands of women and girls walking by everyday: “the best job you will ever have is performing oral sex for men.”
This, of course, reinforces a message the media already – in slightly more subtle ways – drives home consistently. Women are valuable primarily for their youth, beauty and sexuality. We see it in commercials, TV shows, movies, newspapers, children’s books – pretty much everywhere.
Furthermore, the woman pictured in the ad is Bree Olsen, a porn star who was made semi-famous by, ahem, Charlie Sheen. And if you were to actually visit the website being advertised, you would see actual porn. So this is also part of the mainstream “pornification” of American media. It’s not a question of whether or not porn is harmful on its own – but whether or not it should be in all of our faces, and our kids’ faces, when we walk down the street.
While we do hold this website accountable for their poorly conceived and potentially harmful ad, it’s unlikely that a company called “ArrangementFinders.com” is going to change their tune anytime soon (though it is interesting to note that the site claims to be have more women signed up than men, and yet it’s ad seems to have been ultimately created – like most ads – from the heterosexual male perspective). And the Mayor of Chicago has already made a statement about protecting the website’s first amendment right to free speech.
So instead, we can challenge the company who owns this ad space, and ask them whether or not they feel OK accepting money for something like this knowing the harm it could be having on the local community. And we can let them know that if we’re ever in the market for a huge Chicago billboard (I’m sure somebody reading this blog in Chicago right now is or will be, eventually…), we’re #NotBuyingIt from them as long as they support this kind of advertising.
In the photo above you can make out the name of the billboard company in charge of this spot: Urban Core. While we haven’t found a Twitter handle yet, upon visiting their website we did find this contact email: mrichards@urbancoreoutdoor.com
Feel free to send them a note letting them know you’re #NotBuyingIt.
Imran is the Social Media and Communications Director at MissRepresentation.org. Follow him on Twitter @imransiddiquee
I don’t get why the free speech defense works in cases of offending women and not in racially offensive cases. Or does it work there too? If there was a billboard saying ‘the best job is cotton picking’ and it showed a black man in rags looking thankful at a white man….would the free speech defense still work? I don’t think so. If I am right, then we should find out what argument is used in the case of racial discrimination and start using it in cases of sexism while explicitly drawing the parallels.
Actually, it is better to just show a tired black man in rags looking into the camera. That’s a clear parallel.
I think what annoys me about those ads is that they lack the “feminine gaze”. The characters don’t speak in what any woman I know’s perspective. Most advertisers are smart enough not to be overtly sexist. But it really is.
It saddens me to see that there is more blatant bigotry and discrimination in the comments section of this piece than in the article itself. Gender discrimination and racism are not analogous systems of power; they are not the same, but intersecting systems of domination. We don’t need to find the arguments that “work” for cases of racial discrimination and apply them to sex, because we are talking about two differently articulated power systems. In addition, the complaint that this billboard “wouldn’t fly” if it was about race suggests that we live in a culture that has way more racial sensitivity than it actually does.