Thursday, April 24, 2008

Sexist Ads in Sweden – Full Steam Ahead

A sense of normalcy has invaded Swedish politics. And I am pleasantly surprised. And happy. And pumped that I will be able to continue looking at ads with scantily clad women hawking the newest products that I obviously need. Because without scantily clad women I just don’t know which products to buy.

The Moderate party (the conservative party here in Sweden) has decided not to ban sexist ads. Sexist is the term used by Eva-Maria Svensson who initially suggested the ridiculousness. As The Local reports Svensson defines sexist as anything “‘with a commercial aim’ that can be ‘construed as offensive to women or men.’” That is somewhat broad. Because I’m pretty sure there is always going to be someone who is offended by something. Especially here in Sweden.

I wrote earlier that the idea of banning sexist advertising was ridiculous due to numerous reasons. A quick excerpt here:

“Honestly, I’ve never seen an ad, with men or women in it, that I have felt was so outlandish and sexist that I thought that there was a problem with sexism in advertising. Most of the time, those ads that are seen to be sexist are so ridiculous that you can’t help but laugh. Or you should. Unfortunately, a symptom of APC (Acute Political Correctness) is being unable to laugh at anything that could be turned into some sort of egregious slight against all of humanity. Or at least one distinct group. Unfortunately, this view often wins out, to the chagrin of people thinking with a clearer mind.

Complete political correctness eliminates everyones differences and takes away what makes life so interesting. People are different. Some people are smarter. Some people are better looking. Some people are more athletic. Some are even women. And some are even men. But political correctness wants to make sure that everyone is the same. Ridiculous.

Ideas of what is offensive are vast, a United States Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart, was quoted as saying in response to a case involving a movie that was considered obscene “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced . . . [b]ut I know it when I see it.” Which simply means to me that it is up to the interpretation of the individual.

Banning ads that might be deemed sexist by a neo-feminist, and banning ads that might be deemed sexist by a 93 year old woman, and banning ads that might be deemed as sexist by the common person is going to be a very difficult task. And who wins? Is political correctness so important that something as benign as a super model modeling lingerie could be deemed as sexist? Or an ad touting underwear shows a butt, in underwear, with the tag line “We love bottoms?” That’s not sexist. That’s targeted marketing. An underwear company sure as hell better love bottoms. Otherwise they are in the wrong branch.”


This post managed to get some people fired up, some people to agree with me, and some people to make asinine generalizations about Americans. The latter suck. For the record.

Anyway, I’m just pumped to see the Swedish government not giving in. Standing up for common sense. Standing up to the feminists who just take it too far sometimes. Advocating a stop to sexism. In order to try to be politically correct they threw in the whole man and woman thing. And of course, while the proposal pointed out that both women and men could be victims of sexism, the ensuing backlash focused only on the use of a woman’s body to sell things. Which in itself could be deemed sexist by a neo-malist as opposed to the neo-feminist.

So good work Sweden. Seems that someone in the government has the balls to stand up to the feminists who are attempting to castrate Swedish men. (That ought to fire someone up.)

Welcome to Sweden. Where sexist ads will continue to bombard the Swedish consumer.

9 comments:

  1. I find it very interesting that women dress in a very attractive (sexy) way, which is OK, but you can't take a picture of a sexy woman and show it in public. I love to look at sexy women, and I am sure women love to look at sexy men, so what is the big deal - enjoy it!!

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  2. but that probably fires people up too... because why would a woman feel it necessary to dress in an attractive way. Probably just to satisfy the sexist male dominated world we live in.

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  3. Or do they dress for the female world???

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  4. see thats a good point. does a person dress sexy or attractively or nice in order to feel better about themself and to satisfy themselves. or the pressures of people of their own sex. or the pressures of the opposite sex.

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  5. All the above,a nd I beleive most people dress to satisfy their EGO

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  6. some may just dress because they have jobs and it is generally frowned upon to show up undressed!?

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  7. I blame societal constraints. we are all just being held back by society. nature meant for us to be naked. man.

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  8. Gah. It's kind of painful to read some of the horrible things I wrote so long ago. Live and learn.

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