Sexist ads: is the ASA right to ban them?
Motherhood has become an “offensive gender stereotype”, said Katie Glass in The Sun. At least, that’s the message of a new ruling from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which last week banned two “supposedly sexist” television adverts under new rules, introduced in June, that outlaw harmful “gender stereotypes”. So what were these appalling ads? “Did they feature women in lingerie chained to the kitchen sink?” Or a businessman smacking his secretary’s bottom? “Er, no.” One of the ads – for Volkswagen – depicted a succession of men involved in adventurous activities, from athletics to space exploration, before a closing shot of a woman sitting next to a pram. The other – for Philadelphia cream cheese – showed two new dads absentmindedly leaving a baby on a restaurant’s moving conveyor belt, before one exclaims, “Let’s not tell Mum”, as he realises his mistake.
Yes, they were intended to be funny, said Lucie McInerney in The Independent – but at best, these ads were “boring and lazy”. At worst, they represent “something far more concerning” – that some in TV advertising “still struggle with the revolutionary idea that women work and men can be primary caregivers”. Would it have been so difficult for them to make one of the astronauts in the VW advert a woman? Or for one of the bungling fathers in the Philadelphia ad to have been a mum? Despite a predictable outcry against the ban from those who say feminists need to “lighten up” and “get a sense of humour”, the industry has proved once again that it is “incapable” of resisting outdated gender stereotypes. It all serves to underline why the ASA felt the need to introduce its rules in the first place.
On the contrary, said Fay Weldon in the Daily Mail: the “tiny” number of complaints it received shows that its “nannyish” ban is an “absurd overreaction”: only 128 people said they were offended by the Philadelphia ad, and a mere three by the VW one. But even if that outrage were to become more widespread, said Katherine Timpf in National Review, it is highly questionable whether it is the role of government to spend “taxpayer-funded resources” on protecting the public from the alleged dangers of “viewing potential stereotypes” – an issue which, frankly, most of us are “perfectly capable” of handling ourselves. After all, our ability to take our money elsewhere means that we already have in our possession an ideal mechanism to discourage companies that persist in making truly offensive or harmful ads. “It’s called public opinion.”