Plastic Surgery Children’s Book, More Talking about Race & Gaming and Hanes Apologizes for Those Ads

There’s been a lot of talk about the children’s book My Beautiful Mommy, it’s all about explaining to a child that mommy needs a tummy tuck and breast implants and after that she’s even more beautiful. Just typing that sentence made me want to throw up but I haven’t blogged about it because the book is coming from a vanity press and will sell approximately 0 – 10 copies, if that. Even knowing that though there’s something about the coverage that’s been bothering me and Laurie and Debbie over at Body Impolitic hit the nail on the head with their post on the subject. It’s not the book so much as the kind of coverage it has received and the validation that gives it.

Pat over at Token Minorities has written part two of his Suggestions for Talking about Race and Games and these are especially useful for those of us who get into heated discussions involving identity politics. Pat confronts us over the fact that you won’t convert most people, and talks about investing so much energy in these discussions. I’ve learned a lot of the lessons he talks about the hard way, now I’m more likely to engage someone a couple of times and then back away. For me it’s more about trying to show people (the person I’m arguing with as well as the people that may be watching) another way of thinking about something. Head over and read it Pat has some good points on why to engage and why not to.

So I have my issues with GLAAD (unsurprising they’re some of the same issues I have with the HRC and other mainstream GLBT organizations) but apparently they took notice of the Hanes ads and sent off a strongly worded email. It got an apology from Hanes who backpedaled as quickly as possible and stated that they had never actually approved the ads and they we offended too. I’m a little…not angry exactly but perturbed by excerpted part of the GLAAD letter: “The use of the f-word and other hateful slurs to sell products is reprehensible.” I’m just a little bothered that they summarized the two other ads with “hateful slurs”. Presumably they didn’t say n-word and p-word because they are a GLBT organization and that’s what they focus on but they failed to think that some GLBT people are People of Color as well. I don’t know maybe this is all informed by my issues with GLAAD, which I think only really represents the rights of rich, white, gay males but it just irks me.  

 

Hanes Tagless Underwear Ad Campaign Uses Slurs

Wow, really just wow.  

If it were artwork I think the ads would be really thought provoking and interesting about the weight of certain words and the stereotypes they carry with them.

The campaign is not art however it is an AD and is idiotic, I mean for real. This AD is being used to sell tagless underwear I find it offensive and fucked-up to use these hurtful words for commercial gain. Also as my friend Robin questioned “Who designed it? How do they know about the baggage of dragging those words around?” And she’s right. Had this been done by an activist artist, who had experience with the slur (tag) in question, attempting to interrogate the way we use these words and live with their weight and horror it would be one thing but it’s not it’s another big business company trying to be shocking and offensive. They are trying to say that these tags carry baggage and with all those tags wouldn’t it be better to have tagless underwear. That’s not a reason to use this type of language to me.

The Paki one carries extra weight since these were created by the Bombay division of McCann Erickson and most of us know of the antagonism between India and Pakistan but they are all an attempt to use the pain of words that have used to insult, dehumanize and destroy people’s self-worth to sell some underwear. No, wait I need to repeat that: They are using the words nigger, paki and faggot to sell tagless underwear.

via towelroad

Whew *deep breath* OKay now that I’ve got that out of my system what do you guys think?

Edited To Add: Talking to Catherine below made me wonder, exactly who is being targeted by this ad campaign? It’s not people of African diaspora, Queer folks or Pakistanis because you don’t court csomeone by using a word they associate with pain and terror, so exactly who are they courting by playing to stereotypes?
*sigh* Do I even need to say it?