Summer’s Eve gives us a lesson in history and ladyparts – CommercialClack

Feminine hygiene products are … interesting. What I mean is, they are advertised in very particular ways, mostly avoiding actually mentioning the topic of feminine hygiene. That’s why we get women walking on the beach, or women smiling far too broadly for the current situation or the classic description of feeling “not so fresh.” My guess is some men can’t handle imagining women in that light, especially considering one particular male writer at CliqueClack had trouble even typing the word “vagina” when we discussed this post over the listserv this week. Recently, Summer’s Eve premiered an TV ad that says it loud and proud … well, the first letter at least. Baby steps.

When I first watched this video and it got to the big reveal, I just started … laughing. And I kept laughing well after the ad was over, because you know what this commercial is saying? VAGINAS ARE MAGICAL! They are powerful objects of magic that move the course of history with their vagina-ness. This is hilarious to me, since I’ve been the proud owner of one for two and a half decades and have never used it to directly control civilizations and cause battles to the death … yet.

Wait a second — small item of immense power … shaping the course of history … with men worshiping it, willing to die just for a chance to use it and a serious female voice-over narrating it all? … Oh my god, Summer’s Eve has made vaginas into the One Ring of organs! Now I keep replaying the video, waiting for an Uruk-hai to come bursting through that forest scene to stab Sean Bean.

While I honestly find the commercial to be more hilarious than offensive, I can see why some are calling it anti-feminist. For one, despite the apparently positive message that it’s totally awesome to have a vagina, the ad does look at women’s bodies as objects. Two of the four women in the main part of the video are completely passive, having men fighting for the women’s mystical nethers as the prize. By making it quite clear that the men are indeed killing each other simply for her vagina — the product’s tagline “Hail to the V” makes that fact absolute — the ad is reminiscent of Jean de Meun’s addition to Roman de la Rose, the medieval dream poem where the love interest is a literal rose that the hero plucks through trickery and force (hey, look Mom, I’m using my English degree!). Considering how women have actually been treated throughout so much of history, I just don’t know if making us seem even more like objects is a step in the right direction. We also see Cleopatra raising her hands into a symbolic “V” to evoke an entire nation to follow her, but now her rise to power has nothing to do with her intellect or ambition — it was just her genitals doing the work.

Why do I bring this up? Because media can influence us and the generation after us, and subtle stuff like this bother me. The sad truth is, vaginas don’t contain magical powers that rule dynasties. It’s true that female sexuality can be a powerful thing, but that has more to do with a woman’s confidence and her body language, not just her genitals — and then we’re getting into womanhood being defined by more than just her body parts, which is kind of my point. While this is only a minute-long commercial and meant to play for a chuckle, that doesn’t stop it from affecting how women see themselves. If Don Draper saw the ad, he’d say it first makes the viewer feel good about herself and then makes her feel like she’s in desperate need of the product. After all, her vagina can move mountains, so why hasn’t she conquered the world yet? Because she hasn’t used Summer’s Eve Cleansing Wash, of course!

Clacked by Katie Schenkel
on Aug 05, 2011 @ 13:00 EST5EDT