Comments on: Dead sexy

By: sianushka

sianushka — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:29:33 +0000

jennifer ruth!
lets set up the feminist ad agency you talked about on the f-word once. i have moved out the ad industry now, i was made redundandant but i used to be in tears almost at the blatant sexism i had to put up with, including one incident where a very senior member of staff said to me and a colleague that “we’d probably seen a lot of cock in our time”.
i hate the way the industry uses sexism in such nasty and stupid ways,. because a lot of the sexism in advertising is exactly that – stupid and infantile and only has the purpose of enforcing damaging gender norms and stereotypes.
luckily i was made redundant before i would have had to work on a XXX rated video site. nice.

By: gregory

gregory — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:29:00 +0000

“Even more, maybe the success of this campaign has been helped by you.”

I just threw out my Wranglers, because they have less cred than the three quid jeans with ‘George’ on the label.

They were innocent of the photo-thing, they got tossed for not being Levis

By: Polly Styrene

Polly Styrene — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:44:31 +0000

But it hasn’t succeeded. Wrangler sales have fallen. And even if it had, it’s very unlikely that it happened because it was mentioned on a feminst blog.

Talk sense, eh?

By: What's in a name

What's in a name — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:42:47 +0000

Once again, you are seeing what you want to see here… the x time of images of abused women.

No, the people in the pictures aren’t dead. They just mimicking animal behaviours, like a salamander or crocodile for instance. And no, I’m not saying that women are crocodile either okay.

You don’t have to see your enemies (as in anti women?) in everything around you.

If you want to fight this, get out of your own circle otherwise you only be mocking around against each other and you will change nothing.

Even more, maybe the success of this campaign has been helped by you.

By: Polly Styrene

Polly Styrene — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 09:30:41 +0000

Well to repeat what I said on t’grauniad, the campaign isn’t even working.

VF Corporation, which owns brands including Lee, Wrangler and Vans, has cut its annual sales and earnings forecasts, after net income dropped 25%to $100.9 m (£68.5m) over the first quarter of 2009.

By: sparklematrix

sparklematrix — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:04:22 +0000

Of course, why it’s deemed as “sexy” is another story. Daly wrote about this in Gyn/Ecology, I think it was.

By: sparklematrix

sparklematrix — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:27:10 +0000

I’ll hazard a guess that it’s a strong category of media textual power – one in which the dominant group [men] have power over women, and how this power is, in turn, projected through media texts. The role of the media is central here in naturalising gender hierarchy, which is implicit in the way this genre is structured. To apply a very basic semiotic analysis: this genre’s “indexed, connotation code (albeit arbitrary as is all textual analysis)” reminds women of their mortality; particularly at the hands of men. This, of course, also includes the ‘snuff-movie‘.

On a related note Mary Daly says.

“The fact is that we live in a profoundly anti-female society, a misogynistic “civilization” in which men collectively victimize women, attacking us as personifications of their own paranoid fears, as The Enemy. Within this society it is men who rape, who sap women’s energy, who deny women economic and political power”

By: Cath Elliott

Cath Elliott — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:17:29 +0000

I think what frustrates me so much about this genre is that I just don’t get it. I mean, porn, prostitution, sexual violence, although I’m totally opposed to them at least I have some understanding of what’s behind them, and what peoples’ motivations might be. But this shit I really can’t comprehend.

I can’t get how someone can look at any of the pictures people have linked here, and the Quinn ones Caroline’s put on her blog, and think to themselves “Wow, fantastic image”.

They’re images of dead women ffs! How can they be attractive to anyone, or sexy to anyone but a fucking necrophiliac?

If someone can explain the psychology or whatever behind this or recommend some reading for me I’d really appreciate it.

‘Cos I’m well and truly flummoxed.

By: sparklematrix

sparklematrix — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:06:24 +0000

Yup, this is from America’s next top model – ’07

http://www.zap2it.com/news/custom/photogallery/zap-photogallery-antm8-crimescenevictims,0,698280.photogallery?index=2

By: sparklematrix

sparklematrix — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:50:52 +0000

Yes, there’s a whole genre of eroticised dead women in media and other gigs and I not sure if it’s a recent phenomena or not. I’m thinking of America’s next top model a couple of years ago which featured Images of ’dead’ women, a lot of whom looked as though they had met a violent end and a PSA for drink-driving not long after that. And then the Duncan Quinn ads and loads more at the ’Sociological images – seeing is believing’ site over the past year or two.
Worshiping at the fetishized alter of female-death? Strangely enough it’s also bringing to mind the video-recorded images splashed all-over the western media of Neda Agha-Soltan in the Iranian demonstrations as she lay dying.