According
to an article in The New York Times earlier this month,
advertising executives are turning more often to openly gay and
lesbian celebrities to help sell their products. For example,
interior designer Thom Filicia of Queer Eye for the Straight
Guy has recently been signed on to replace Kirstie Alley
as spokesperson for Pier 1, and jeweler Cartier has featured newlyweds
Melissa Etheridge and Tammy Lynn Michaels in print ads for their
pricey Menotte bracelets.
While
using openly gay and lesbian celebrities to endorse product lines
that can be found in middle America is potentially something to
cheer, the truth is somewhat less heartening: although the amount
of television and print advertising featuring gay men
has certainly increased lately—largely due to the popularity
of the hit show Queer Eye—ads featuring lesbians
or bisexual women have not significantly increased. In
addition, while the majority of the new ads featuring gay men
are television commercials, those featuring lesbians are print
ads.
Which
means The New York Times is making the same mistake so many others
have in their media coverage of how "gay" American culture
has become, and equating gay men with
lesbians and bisexual women.
The
best place to find advertising featuring gays and lesbians
is indisputably The
Commercial Closet, a nonprofit organization and website that
archives gay-themed ads and encourages ad agencies to produce
gay-friendly advertisements. Out of this treasure trove of over
700 commercials and 700 print ads, only 312 are focused on lesbians;
in comparison, there are nearly 900 ads focused on gay men. When
limited to television commercials, The Commercial Closet has archived
89 lesbian-themed commercials, and 61 of those aired in North
America.
It
is commercials in Europe, however, that provide the most seductive
and positive portrayals of lesbians. Witness a commercial
for Boisvert Lingerie, which shows a woman dressing up (in
lingerie, of course) to meet someone for dinner at a posh restaurant:
as she walks through the restaurant, men watch her approach someone
with short hair who is dressed in a suit. After they kiss, the
camera reveals that they are both women, and the tag line asks
“Do men deserve it? No.” Something so overtly and
unashamedly lesbian—not to mention something that is even
somewhat butch/femme—would never air in the US.
Among
the 61 lesbian-themed commercials from North America,
over one-third were political ads (i.e., focusing on election-related
issues), and nine commercials advertised Queer
as Folk or were public service-type announcements from
MTV. This means that only about half of these commercials were
actually selling a product.
Six
of these commercials sold alcoholic beverages and featured stereotypically
feminine lesbians in straight bars who are the subject of the
straight male gaze. Typically, the ads revolve around a straight
man who attempts to buy a woman a drink, but is thwarted when
another woman enters the scene and proceeds to kiss or seductively
hug the woman while one or both of them is looking at the straight
man.
In
other words, these commercials play to typical straight male fantasies
about lesbians.
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