Beer Ad Misogyny-Off

vs. I found this tidbit from an AlterNet article about the new Bionic Woman show and the history of fembots to be interesting. It’s about those Heineken ads that featured a female robot dancing for its male audience while serving out beer.

I’m not about to argue that fembots are a positive trend in advertising. Though Garfield might have been overreading the Heineken ads when he suggested they were serving beer out their uterus, they still disturb.

But as mute robots, are they really more subservient and here for your pleasure than the soft-flesh porn lite usually served between games? As far as the argument that female cyborgs embody sexist body ideals, are they that much worse than the standard 34-24-36 Budweiser model? If anything, the impossibility of their parts would seem to dissuade emulation.

Plus, while the SVEDKA_GRL cashes in on the idea of making it with a big-breasted piece of metal, the ad’s not all retrograde. “Thank you for making the gay man’s fashion gene available over-the-counter in 2033,” reads one of its New York billboards. “Madame President and her first lady serve Svedka at all official state functions,” pushes another. It’s more sensational than it is political but at least she/it boasts a point of view.

Let’s just get it out of the way and say that the “gay man’s fashion gene” statement, though probably in the pursuit of gay acceptance, as so often happens, is actually pretty offensive. The one about the female president is pretty good, fair enough. But do statements promoting gender equality give you a free license to be otherwise sexist? Last time I checked, the answer was no. So I find the point to be fairly moot.

On to the ads themselves.

The question here is whether or not the Heineken fembot is better or worse than any other type of sexist beer marketing. I’d like to ask since when, exactly, that became the way to measure sexism. Are we really going to use “well at least it’s not as sexist as that” as a way to excuse and dismiss actual sexism? Why the hell does “better” matter? Blacks are no longer slaves, so yeah, they have it a hell of a lot better than before. But when you’re still faced with living in a racist society, how much does it really matter? Women in the U.S. have the right to vote and and own property. That’s certainly a step forward from previous centuries! But does that mean we should just shut up and accept all of the other misogyny, because it is comparatively not “as bad?” Uh, no.

But I do in fact find the comparison interesting for navel-gazing purposes. The images at the top of the post are the Heineken fembot and Coors Light models wearing body paint. Which is more offensive? On a completely visceral level, the women in body paint strikes me as more offensive, because they’re real women. But on a deeper level, how much of a difference is there, really? The body paint is interesting because of the fact that it’s metallic and looks like some strange kind of body armor. The fact is, it does not immediately look like body paint. And that’s precisely why it’s interesting: it has taken women’s bodies and turned them into objects that appear inhuman. Not exactly fembots, but not huge leaps away, either. And isn’t that precisely what fembots are about– dehumanizing women?

Here’s the problem that I have with fembots (other than the word “fembot): they are rarely given any of the strong or interesting traits associated with “male” robots. I have not seen the new Bionic Woman, so I can’t comment on that particular portrayal. But I’m thinking everything from Rosie on The Jetsons, the Austin Powers’ fembots, the new Stepford Wives and the Heineken fembot. On the “male” robot front, though, we’ve got the Blade Runner cyborgs, the main robot in I, Robot, the terminator in Terminator 2, and CP3O from Star Wars. I am admittedly not a science fiction buff, so less mainstream sci-fi may be a different story. But using these examples of popular, mainstream science fiction robots, I sure as hell notice a pattern. The “fembots” are either highly sexual, highly obedient or both. By contrast, male robots are very rarely sexualized, tend to have free will and often result in discussions about autonomy and the nature of humanness.

It’s not that I’m opposed to seeing “female” robots. If we’re going to keep seeing “male” robots, and I think that we are, it’s only right and fair. But I’m only for leveling out the playing field if we’re actually, you know, leveling it out.

And I don’t think that anyone can say that about the Heineken fembot. What strikes me most in the “are they much worse” comment is that it implies that they are somehow different. Look at the fembot, and look at the Budweiser cutout (which is apparently from 2000, but looks significantly older to me). What, exactly, is so different about their poses? Skimpy outfits, spread legs, breasts pushed out. It seems that the Heineken ads really aren’t very different after all. They’re just new.