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Pop Culture
Jun 05, 2008, 06:58AM

Five Foot Three

Sexism: Enough Already.

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Photo by BritishYosef

There is a billboard on I-83 South in Baltimore that I see whenever my husband picks me up from work. It’s an advertisement for Smyth Jewelers with an enormous diamond engagement ring plastered in the middle. Across the top in big black letters, designed so that it looks like the ring is actually speaking these words, it reads: “This may be the last decision you get to make.”

Get it? Because you’re a guy and you’re getting engaged, and then married and because women are evil, controlling shrews who like to tie your nuts in a knot and never again let you do, think or feel anything on your own! Perhaps I’m a bit too sensitive, having just gotten married, but I hate this billboard. It’s incredibly offensive, not to mention wholly idiotic—if you’re trying to encourage men to spend money on engagement rings, wouldn’t it be more advantageous to make marriage sound appealing?

It is really a perfect example of the subtle sexism (as subtle as a towering advertisement can be) that remains all too pervasive in American culture. It’s meant to be taken as a joke; the kind of thing that a stable married couple heading into Baltimore to catch an evening baseball game could see and, with a knowing glance and casual chuckle, shrug off as just plain silly, because really marriage is all about compromise, joint decision making, a shared life based on mutual respect and participation. In a sense it’s a harmless advertisement: it’s really only meant for people who have marriage in their futures, who don’t believe that getting married is little more than a socially-accepted version of male castration and are therefore, unlikely to take the joke to heart. On a micro level, it’s nothing more than a stupid billboard that may or may not be funny based on your personal sense of humor. But as one example in what feels like an endless sea of subtle attacks against women, it helps further perpetuate outdated and completely unsubstantiated gender stereotypes. It cuts women down to size, makes us the butt of the joke and raises men up. Women are ridiculous and domineering—good for you fellas for having enough courage and open-mindedness to marry us anyway.

I don’t generally let things like this bother me. I’m usually more than capable of allowing casual sexism to just roll off my back—if you want to be sexist, that’s your problem. I’m not going to let your idiocy ruin my life. But lately, grappling with my own issues about getting married young and what that means for me as a woman, I’m finding it harder and harder to just smile and shrug it off, to accept it as just a little joke.

Take for instance the Time Out New York magazine cover that hit newsstands before the premiere of Sex and the City that featured the film’s four leading actresses with duct tape photo-shopped over their mouths. “Enough already,” the cover exclaimed. “We love ‘em, but it’s just too much.” I understand the sentiment. The press for this film has been absolutely insane. But putting duct tape over a woman’s mouth, for any reason, is never an acceptable practice. For starters, it immediately conjures images of sexual abuse and violence and sends a very clear message: we’ve heard enough from you ladies, time to shut the hell up. But it’s not as if these four women are doing anything different from every other actor or actress who goes on a press junket. The promotion overload comes less from the film’s stars and more from the women who are interested in the movie. By duct taping the mouths of Sex and the City’s main characters, Time Out New York is really telling all women to shut up—those who wrote about the film in excited anticipation, those who picked it apart for its excessive consumerism, the shallowness of the lives it depicts. To all the women who cared about this movie for any number of reasons and were the driving force behind the flood of press, Time Out New York wants you to shut your mouths. Stop talking about the things that interest you. Maybe just stop talking all together.

Again, it’s really just a joke. I’m sure the editors at Time Out New York don’t actually believe it’s appropriate to duct tape a woman’s mouth shut. And if I had to put my money on it, I’d guess they’re not really all that sexist either, no more than the average 21st century person at least. But all the joking helps create a culture in which men think it’s okay to lean out of their cars windows and whistle or holler at women on the street. A culture where, at my own wedding, someone seriously asked me if I now planned to quit my job. Or worse yet, one where yesterday some guy thought it was okay to pull up beside me as I waited to cross the street and offer to give me a ride home, if I had sex with him first. That’s hardly a fair trade.

Do we live in a sexist culture because our advertising promotes these beliefs, or is our advertising sexist because it merely reflects our cultural climate? I don’t really have an answer, but I know one thing for sure: a giant billboard that jokingly calls attention to one of the oldest and least humorous stereotypes about women and marriage isn’t helping anyone.

Discussion
  • Not a fair trade? With the price of gas these days, I'm surprised that people aren't knocking on windows offering sex for a ride home. I see a promising business model that mimics a taxi-stand. No? Seriously though, nice article. There is so much of this stuff out there that I don't even notice it any more--a rather sad commentary on society if I do say so myself.

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  • it's really pretty pervy too. she looks like she's about 12 and he looks like a 58 year old man. plus, i don't think she'd like the stash.

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  • Christ, it's a billboard. Billboards are meant to sell product. TV commercials are meant to sell product. Sure, the one Taylor describes is stupid, but not one-tenth as bad as all those prescription drug commercials that spend more time warning about possible side effects than the benefit of a restful sleep, elimination of a "going" problem or a boner at command.

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  • I think Timothy misses the point of the article. It's not about the billboard or the product. It's about the words, the implication. You notice those "boner on command" advertisements are pretty careful about their language, never implying anything negative about the character of males in general. The billboard in question could just have easily said "This may be the most important decision you get to make." Same product, same advertisement, but without the stab at women. No "henpecking, domineering" future wife implied. I think it's an important difference.

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  • Ronnie Ann, you're a doll, but you're parsing words. I don't think Claire Taylor would've been appeased by the substitution of the word "important" for "last." I think Claire makes a much better case when she writes about "Sex and the City." Want real sexism? Look at the covers of Vanity Fair.

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  • Hmm...I'm going to have to disagree. I think that the "last" is the whole point of the billboard and of this article--I think that changing that makes a big difference. While the Sex and the City examples are much more explicit (and high profile) something as simple (and seemingly innocent) as a billboard shows how sexism rears its head in a variety of situations.

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  • Doll? How old are you anyway. Geez, nothing sexist in using that term. No siree.

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  • Ronnie Ann, you took the bait! Now, be a sweet gal and lighten up.

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  • How typical, and boring. I'm done.

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  • Can someone please call me doll, too?

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  • Iris, you ought to stage an intervention here and get the kids to stop fighting. I see Claire's point in the article, but in the larger scheme of things—a bunch of immigrants were deported today not far from where I work—an advertisement, even if crude, is just an advertisement and can be ignored.

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  • I prefer the other engagement ring billboard by penn station with natty boh and the utz girl. it's actually pretty sweet.

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  • Wow, sourpuss. While it's true that there are more important things out there than veiled sexism in billboards, I'll bet if there was a racist billboard up it would cause quite a stir. Look up what happened with the "Turbo Cajones" billboard among the hispanic community and then tell me that billboards can easily be ignored. Advertisements can be extremely inflammatory, and while the one Taylor mentions is mostly just a failed attempt at humor, I'm not sure that we can generalize by saying that they can be ignored. Billboards are specifically designed to be nearly impossible to ignore, and for the masses of impressionable people out there, they will absorb the sexist/racist etc. ads without even realizing it.

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  • DT, I agree with you up to a point. Certainly corporations are ruthless with their advertising--pushing menthol cigarettes in black neighborhoods is a good example--but in comparison to television ads and, probably more significantly, television content, billboards seem like a relic of the past. I'd say that women, justifiably, are more upset about the continuing practice of getting less money than men for the same jobs.

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  • I think the point sourpuss is that all of this advertising, billboards and tv, whether they are relics of the past or not, promote a sexist belief system that contributes to the continuing practice of women making less money for the same jobs. Ads that "cut women down to size" as Taylor says justify the belief that women deserve less money than men because they are somehow less worthy of fair and equal treatment.

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  • Awesome work, Claire!

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  • OK. I know I said I was done, but I guess I just can't help but come back and ask Iris why, exactly, you want someone to call you doll? You're young, you seem intelligent. This seems to be asking for something demeaning. So why do you want that?

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  • Ronnie Ann, maybe Iris is a post-feminist, and secure enough not to be ticked off at harmless language. Were you charter subscriber to Ms.? I don't mean this as an insult by any means (my mom was a subscriber), just trying to find out what generation you're from.

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