Thursday, August 09, 2007

Reverse Sexual Discrimination

Well ... not that it's "reverse" discrimination, but the focus is in another direction from what we're used to seeing.

This article (Rona building bad blood with TV ad by Chris Cobb) at the National Post discusses a Rona commercial on TV that depicts all husbands as lazy guys who don't help around the house.

I'm glad that someone is making a stink about the discrimination aspect. Discrimination isn't right, no matter what form it takes. I think it's a real step backwards to keep throwing sexual discrimination around ... it really undermines the serious issues that so many people face when we're making jokes about it on any level.

2 comments:

Tom said...

I think being able to make fun of men has been a staple of the ad industry. You have to be careful about how you depict women (beer commercials may be an exception), but men are fair game for being stupid and lazy. I'm surprised it's taken this long for someone to say anything, funny though it's for a Rona ad.

tom

Anonymous said...

Yeah that always kills me when they say reverse racism or reverse discrimination. It's just racism and just discrimination. I like the way you made the distinction. It seems that even when a positive shift toward equality is depicted that it is cheapened by that being the focus. It's not just a guy vacuuming or cleaning it's a wife surprised that he is doing so or she had to Tom Sawyer him into it with a really cool gadget. It would be really cool to see gender bias taken out of marketing campaigns and they just show "people" using the products that are being marketed.