Ads Featuring Animal Products Demean Women

A poster for the soon-to-be released movie "Julie & Julia" is the latest advertisement of which I've become aware that features animal parts or secretions in a sexual, sexist nature.

Four others are ads for fast-food chains.

At the movie theater today I noticed the poster for "Julie & Julia," a movie starring Amy Adams and Meryl Streep, set to open next month. Streep plays Julia Child; Adams plays a woman who blogs about cooking Child's recipes for a year.

It's always nice to see a movie centered on women, as male actors still get better roles. But, for me, the movie poster had "testosterone" written all over it.

As you can see, two eggs are under the line "Do you have what it takes?" But the eggs look like testicles. I thought perhaps I was being too critical and sensitive, but a quick Google search for the poster tonight confirmed my thoughts. Adam Reed at the site "Gordon and the Whale" wrote about the poster in April, with this headline: "Julie & Julia poster has balls... I mean eggs."

Our similar thoughts ended there, though. While he found the poster clever, I found it offensive to women. As I'm assuming the movie will show, one needn't possess testicles or large amounts of testosterone to be successful, so why imply the opposite in advertisements?

Four fast-food restaurants are also using advertisements of a sexual nature to lure customers.

Carl's Jr., no stranger to using sex to sell its wares, once featured Paris Hilton clad in heels and a swimsuit while washing a car and eating a burger. This time, though, the company has launched a Web site called "Hot Chicks Eating Burgers." Need I say more?

Burger King has also recently launched an ad campaign for its BK Super Seven Incher. The ad features a woman, mouth open, ready to give the sandwich a blow job. The tagline? "IT'LL BLOW your mind away."

Erik Marcus at Vegan.com has written about two other other fast-food ads in his post "Hardee's and Quizno's Try to Out-Sleaze Burger King."

The former once showed Jessica Simpson grinding on a car in one of its television ads. Now, though, they are using online video to advertise their new biscuit holes. A "market researcher" asks people for better names for the product. Some of the responses include hole munchers, iced b-holes and fisticules.

Quizno's "Toasty Torpedo" video features an oven urging a Quizno's employee to "Put it in me, Scott. It's over a foot of Quizno's flavor ..."

Now I'm not a prude, and several years ago I actually prided myself on my ability to turn anything into a sexual reference. But there's a difference between adult humor and sexism. In my opinion, the first three advertisements in this post are offensive to women.

Seems like a good time to add another book to my to-read list: Carol J. Adams' "The Sexual Politics of Meat."

("Julie and Julia" poster courtesy of "Gordon and the Whale." Burger King image courtesy of "copyranter.")