Sexy or Sexist? Ads on the Facepalm Beach
CC Attribution - ShareAlike 3.0 Germany:
You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor and the work or content is shared also in adapted form only under the conditions of this
Nerdinger, Elle
Sexy ads are often made in the seaside town of Facepalm Beach where creators and their customers like to be tongue-in-cheek and a little provocative. Everyone has a lot of fun creating in Facepalm Beach. But when launch day comes, shitstorms brew up in the sky above those happy creators. These storms can damage businesses and reputations and cost jobs. It does not have to be that way. Let's look at Faceplam Beach's sex selling logic and why it needs some competition.
 Hi, Hennies! I'm back! Well, first, this is a cute kitten, of course. And this is like the second part of my talk that I held last year about sex, unicorns and awesome sauce. So let's get started. This is a project by BSBG Agentur Laboratories. BSBG stands for Bullshit Be Gone. And it's a project by the House of Nerdinger. Some of you might know what drag houses are or voguing houses. House nerding is the same for nerds. Queer, non-binary, cyborg nerds. So, here we go. We have to ask things. Is something sexy or sexist? Because sometimes people get something a bit muddled up and they sometimes think something that just shows sex, maybe sexist, or the other way round. So, welcome to Face Palm Beach. Oh, God, this picture is very dark and you can't see it. It doesn't matter. Okay, welcome to Face Palm Beach. The image in the background is a city, a friend of mine built on Skyline Cities and I thought it was so nice. And he asked me, oh, do you want, what name should I give it? I said, call it Face Palm Beach and I can use the picture in my talk at Repubblica. So we did it. He's also a member of my house. So, I will start with a bit of a perspective. I hope you can see what this is. It's a very dark picture. Maybe the lights can be dimmed a little bit. And it's just showing where we are. I was here on planet Earth because I want to put you into perspective before I really start. Do you know what this is? Anyone know what this is? Okay. It's Earth Flag, a proposal by the designer Oscar Pernfeld and it's supposed to represent planet Earth and also the people living on planet Earth and remind people on planet Earth that we are all living on this planet and therefore the same and we have to take care of each other and the planet. And a part of the aspect of taking care of each other and taking each other seriously and having fun on Earth as human beings is sex and the representation of sex, maybe also in commerce and adverts. So back to Face Palm Beach. But before we stay here, I want to take you on a little ride yet. So I'm going to fast forward through the time vortex and we arrive on the 2nd of May, 2015, 2016 in 500 years and it looks like that. And here in this futuristic city, there's a teacher walking around with students that have come in from the rural area where they live sort of a bit like a Star Trek economy, sort of everyone's fine but not everyone lives in these mega cities and they come to this mega city and the teacher sort of trying to get the kids to the museum and then the kids suddenly see this advert. It's just there, this advert and they go talking about a party they want to organise and oh yeah, oh we shagged each other there and then oh yeah, pretty normal as if the kids were seeing an advert about sport and talking about themselves playing that sport like playing football or cricket or whatever. And this is the label, it's about outer space mobiles, yeah, terrassenmobil, you can say in German. And the teacher just says okay kids, yeah, it's not talking about your weekend plans but what you've seen here, I can teach you a bit of a lesson because 500 years ago before the shift, before the world became the way we live in it now, things were a bit different and I'll tell you something about a very normal product like milk, where 500 years ago some people selling milk sold it with sex, not the way we would baby, showing people having a fantastic orgy in a pool of milk, but it's a bit more one sided that lots of you know this. I left out a special motive because it was a special e-crap. Anyway, and the kids say oh yeah, it's only women and the teacher says well, that was times when people thought sex was something only certain people were interested in and the other people were supposed to sort of provide it but those people providing it, women, weren't sort of really interested in sex so they were more passive whereas the men were the ones pursuing the sex. And then one of the boys says oh well that's boring, didn't they have any cheesecake boys? So he, yeah, and the teacher says yeah, you're right, sometimes the word cheese cake boys but mostly for men who like men because people like to presume 500 years ago that pursuing sex and having fun with sex was something only men would do because if women do it, there's lots. So we go back in time, back to our timeframe through the time vortex and here we are again, back here in Berlin and I want to show you a world of fails to sort of go into the subject now. This has got nothing to do with the floor. It might be plausible for a bikini advert or for lingerie. Yes, it's wrong she but it's a bloody advert from people providing floors, selling floors to people who are building houses or sort of remodeling their flat and there's this woman on the floor or on the tiles not wearing any panties. I don't know, she'll catch her death on those cold tiles. I wouldn't want to lie there. And I bet it's just sort of a photoshopped stock picture on there and everything but I don't want to think of lying on those tiles and look at their comic sons. So the people making it must have been a bit daft. Or this mixed with racism. Very nice as if people ordering pizza are only horny men that have a fetish for women that come from a different part of the world where we are bonkers. Or even this crap. Oh yeah, you're old dog on now the other new one. Oh lovely lady. Yeah, yeah. Who do you think they're selling it to? Mordor? Or here this lady on the carpet with her lovely jugs and I think God, of course people will start shit storms these days in 2016 because they've just had enough of this narrow minded representation of sex to entice people to buy their products because I think it was in the beginning of 2016 a great Guardian article said for tech conferences or tech fairs why don't you not get rid of the booth babes but bring in the booth boys to entice people who like men, men or women or whatever type of people on the gender spectrum that will also feel welcome and know that we are meant like me liking men. I meant that if people sell something to me with a male body and say okay they mean me actually. I like that. I might even want to buy it even more than just normally. And on the other hand I think instead of just always wanting to sell with sex you can just have a couple even if it's a bit heteronormative but you can sort of think a little bit further than the tip of your nose maybe just one inch and it would help and maybe prevent you from getting a shit storm. Or you could do it even nicer and one of the most inclusive things is selling things with cute animals like cats. Everyone likes cats and I think people look at it, the face of a cat is something especially from people on the internet are instantly drawn to cats, dogs, cute animals, big eyes, owls or whatever and it works and it won't give you a shit storm. And Mr. Marcia has also said that okay after especially what happened in Cologne that he wants to sort of spark a debate and also maybe pass a law now to ban sexist adverts in Germany. I think it was Friedrich Hein Kreuzberg where it is also already banned here in Berlin, is that right? And did it work? Okay. That's what I thought because the debate has to be a bit more nuanced than just ban something and you have to also know what sexist and what's not and talk about it. That's what I want to do. So we will talk about what is sexist and here we go into a bit of a grey zone because like I said just because something has sex in it, it doesn't have to be sexist. It's like these brutalist buildings. It's nice to look at lots of grey in there but it's not black or white. So this advert for example I saw that at a gas station when I was driving down to the Easterheg in Salzburg and a friend said look at that, that would be something for your presentation. They were right because it's showing men and women having fun. Okay, it's a cigarette advert. I don't care but it was really just showing people having fun. Maybe even you can see these washing machines and you see here all it's about them going in the rain and then going to the wash salon and then having it, their clothes maybe in there and they've somehow got shopping carts, I don't know why and they're having fun. But the good thing is you can see men and women equally represented as something fun and sexy, lively, I like it. Or this company that sells liquorice. I don't like that stuff but my partner does. But I've always seen their ads and they started, I think that was a couple of years ago with Dom's a bit kinky because the black, liquorice and the latex and leather is okay and it wasn't really offensive. I thought it's just maybe sexy but not sexist. And some other things they did like with a cute animal as I said, with a cute raccoon, well executed and then I saw this this year. It was on the 8th of March. I was riding home with a colleague after we'd encountered some blatant sexism, really stupid sexism and I saw this advert and I thought, oh my God, that's so great. It's doing exactly what most other adverts are doing with female bodies, doing it with a beautiful male body and I looked it up online and there were discussions and there was lots of people were saying and I found that interesting, oh, why isn't there an offshie about that one? Why aren't people giving the company a shitstorm because of sexism? That's not how it works because showing a man like that can also still imply something sporty, fitness, I don't know what, but not only just sexualization, that's reserved for women. But people see something naked and equated no matter what it is. Oh, it's naked, it must be sexist. No, that's wrong. It's the context that it's in and you might have it disembodied there which mostly with the female body is demeaning, but with a man it's a bit of a sort of, yeah, it's got a different context and a different feel and it also sets men who may see it and they think, oh God, I don't know what we might feel if I just see this disembodied man. And this advert too is something that I found interesting. People thought this advert for this roller skate night in Dusseldorf was sexist. In fact, it's just showing this woman in a sporty outfit with her partner apparently also in shorts, he's cleaning her roller skates. I don't think that's sexist. Do you think it's sexist? It was just this knee jerk reaction to showing a woman lying somewhere, maybe showing a bit of leg, but actually not being really objectified. She's more shown as a sporty person who's just relaxing after rolling all through Dusseldorf and being active. That's not a sex object to me. So we must ask, yeah, where is the misogyny and is there really a conspiracy out there against women? I would say, okay, this lady's wearing a beautiful tin foil hat, but she shouldn't because at the bottom there's actually a completely different animal there. And I say this animal is not people thinking, oh, let's make some demeaning advert so that women feel bad. It's mostly more unbalanced habits and presumptions about people that make, of course, your everyday work in an advertising agency, marketing or whatever, easy that you know, oh, it's men, oh, it's women, these and these target groups. So we put this into that bin, that into the other bin, and we put that into there and job done. And I can go home and have pizza and watch Netflix. But sadly enough, if you make it easy for yourself, mostly bullshit comes out. So you have presumptions like this. Of course, you also can call it market diversification because if you have one toy for girls, one toy for boys, you can say, oh, yes, can sell more toys to parents that have different types of children, but it's bullshit. Another thing is something I found in a semester book of my partners, I found that very interesting just by chance. And it was this, it was sort of this book with all sorts of different types of info, stunt plan, and so on. There were even cocktail recipes in there. And I saw, going through it, I saw all these tips about wearing suits. And I thought, oh, where are the business tips for female, for female attire? There was none in. There was none in for business clothes for people who aren't men. And then I looked to this stunt plan. And I hope you can see it. It's a bit hazy here for me. And you can see these sexy looking female students in the foreground of this timetable and maybe some boys at the background. That's what I would say is the typical knee jerk reaction because this plan is made for students for the LVTH Aachen. That's an engineer's university. And you always have this stupid presumption. All of them are men. So all of them will be men. And that's one of the deep problems why there's diversity strive in the tech community. And now I come to another thing. These adverts, I also see on my way home in Düsseldorf. They are for a company that sells suits for men. And you can see the presumption here that a man identifies himself through women. Totally heterosexual. It's thinking that just because you're a man and you want to be a manly manly man, so it must be somehow linked to boobs. Or even completely stupid stuff like that. And I researched and the CEO of the company said, oh no, it's not sexist at all. It's about showing women having the upper hand and the men being the toys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Old story. Yes, she's got that upper butt there. Yeah. This is even worse. There was also a similar thing with musical instruments. It made me think of a very old meme, this picture. I'm going to show it to you. Maybe some of you will be thinking, this is a really old meme. I remember seeing it in 1998. Classic. The next thing is this actually happened in Thailand, I think, where apparently this man shown here was sexually assaulting a Porsche. So maybe those ads aren't so good after all, that poor Porsche might have not given its consent. And so you can say this is a one way straight lead into death because you are doing one thing to death. This thing came to me through Twitter. It's absolutely crazy. And I asked the people, I think it was on Twitter people from Pink Stinks who had also tweeted it. And I asked them, well, who made it? Was it an agency, a small agency, who made this thing for this butcher shop? And they butchered their own ads for finding young employees and to learn the art of selling meat in a shop. So you can stand there in a bikini with a big piece of meat. And I found out it was a woman who made it, but the woman even owning the place. And she gave an interview to Forecourse saying, oh, well, I just wanted it to be a bit cheeky. But not thinking one step further because she could have gone and had the same pose with a young man and it would have been like Adam and Eve of meat. Not sexist, just funny or maybe a little bit tasteless, but not sexist. The same thing here, this is something that spawned a lot of strife. There's a long story behind this one. Oh, this is going to be funny. I come from the black forest. So I thought, oh my God, it's the same old thing again, showing a woman. They could have just had the same thing with the male thing and thought of maybe big pine cones and whatever can be long and large, like the trees in the black forest. Have you seen the trees in the black forest? They are long and large. Now then, well, actually, I was told when I saw this, well, actually, the idea for this ad came from a woman. You must understand, young lady. So please lighten up. It is all in the ment. Ironically, it's supposed to be cheeky. So my dear, don't take it so serious. This actually makes fun of sexism and you should actually like that. So it's actually doing what you want and shut up and don't be such a killjoy. I swing both ways. I like Star Wars and Star Trek. I'm star by. Oh, I love Cisco. Anyway, it goes back to this city of Traberg in the black forest because it was a woman who made it a young designer, a student from Traberg. In the black forest, a beautiful city and it has a very famous waterfall, very beautiful, very scenic. And I actually, even when they were as a teenager, was 13 with blue hair, just getting into electronic music and we were in this youth hostel and it was terrible. We were woken up every morning with the Gypsy Kings. All of us were going crazy. And another thing that they did in Traberg was in one of the communal park houses. There was this weird corner parking space where the burgamizer, the mayor said, oh, it's so hard to get into. It's not for women, it's a men's parking space. So yeah, of course, women can't get in there. This woman could. So the burgamizer asked, and I think it was a pensioner to paint this. He didn't enjoy doing it, but he did it. But it's a bit botched, isn't it? It looks stupid. It doesn't even look normal. It looks like something a child painted. It reminds me of this. I instantly thought of that. It's botched Jesus, potato Jesus, I think it's called. So other people came there and sort of painted over the woman. So it just looks like a normal, scenic, painted, weird landscape. Next thing is something that happened near Dusseldorf with the coffee truck. Coffee company, selling coffee to companies, to other companies, mostly secretaries ordering the coffee with a gay driver who had been there for 20 years even, had this. The boss wanted the trucks to look a bit more interesting. The driver refused to drive that car. They ended up in front of court. The owner of the company lost his longtime employee and a lot of customers were unhappy, whereas they could have put something like that on there too. Easy does it. And the comments section in Werben und Verkauf and three comments, I picked this up last week, you can read that comment section. The company should think about the people buying it instead of having one weird person, the boss here, deciding to put on this bullshit because it seems they might have been into cartooning. You know what cartooners are like. This, on the other hand, is a better example for having a cleverly done delivery van from Russia where it really looks as if there's a huge loaf of bread in this van. It's awesome. People will look at it. Is that glass? Is that a big, oh no, it's a painting. Awesome. So you can strive for progress. You don't have to be perfect. And I've got some examples for great sexy ads now. This is an agency from New York that sort of rebranded itself and the owners, the people running it, decided to do it, sort of show themselves naked, fresh start, and went to the gym and went through all sorts of weird regimes to become fit. Look good for this campaign. And I must say it's really, really good because it's men and women, of course, okay, they're able-bodied. They are very fit. It's a certain type of body that they had to put a lot of effort in, but it's still an evenly showing people being sexy, being alluring, and not just female bodies as meat. The same thing, the same photographer was also for Equinox, a luxury gym from the States. And they had this very sporty but sexy campaign after they had this campaign shot by Terry Richardson. It reminds me a bit of Lady Gaga, but the next one is really, really silly. Look at that. The way the woman is like this crab on the floor and the man looking at her like some derpy, herpy derpy. That was my reaction. It's just stupid. But afterwards, they changed it and wanted to show people look. It's still looking sexy, but men and women more diverse and something like this came out. And I actually like looking at these ads, or even something like that, another orgy, but it's people together having an orgy and they look very good, they've all been to the gym and they've not had a lot of donuts to eat and they look awesome. So these examples are great. Another thing is you just need more diversity, also concerning bodies. Sports Illustrated has their famous swimsuit issue now with the plus size model. They're getting there. And there's also this thing that they sort of getting these realistic comparisons that you know with female bodies and Photoshop, they're doing the same with men now. So you can notice that it's better to show someone sexy, maybe even sporty, but have more diversity in there so that people can recognize themselves in the brands and know, oh, okay, I can maybe go to the gym and look good, but hey, there's someone a bit bigger, a bit smaller, and so on and there's more identification there. So the bottom line is if you want to sell with sex, think inclusively. Try and just think more than just in your normal boxes and if you don't know, if in doubt, just use your fucking product or if in doubt, use a cute animal. And now I just want to also say the most important thing is talk about representation and forget that sex is something that only straight men look at and start thinking of balancing because one example is the series Outlander about a woman going back in time to 18th century Scotland. They had a revolution on the screen showing beautiful sexy man in a set, several sex scenes in one episode, the wedding episode, watch it, it's revolutionary. It's anti-gamers, there's still violence in there, there's lots of whiskey drinking and sexy people, but not just women. And so if you start thinking about more perspectives and more different views of sex, you can stop having this typical type of strife where people are bickering about, hey, Mimi, you're being so speasing as you say in Germany, you don't want sexy adverts anymore or how Taniqo the editor of Bildzeitung and I think what she said there was terrible, I don't begrudge anyone, you can have your own self-help group, she said that to stop Bailed Sexism, the campaign to stop having page one or page three girls, which I think is in itself a good thing, I signed their campaign, but I think you also have to think of the other side and say maybe we can have sex but invite the boys along the girls or we just don't do it. So girl, Taniqo, think before you speak and insulting people that want to make things better. So I want to leave you just with the thought that being more diverse and thinking about how you concoct an image, you can stop having a shit storm just because you do the knee jerk naked woman on a floor, you can maybe just put a couple on there, put a cat on the floor or maybe show I don't know, parrot's drinking coffee, it's more interesting. That I think was it, thank you very much. Do we still have time? Okay, so maybe short Q&A, great. Any questions? We still have three minutes I was told. There at the back. Stop microphones coming. But actually, but actually this is the one and only question because we don't have more time. Okay, just briefly you mentioned in the beginning after showing Haiku Masa and the law thing that it's important to have a definition of sexism. Yes. And then it's not the easiest way to just prohibit things. So I was wondering if you could expand a little bit on those two parts. Well, that's what it was about. It was this talk was about the alternatives for forbidding things, this whole talk. Okay. Thank you.
 Hi, Hennies! I'm back! Well, first, this is a cute kitten, of course. And this is like  the second part of my talk that I held last year about sex, unicorns and awesome sauce.  So let's get started. This is a project by BSBG Agentur Laboratories. BSBG stands for  Bullshit Be Gone. And it's a project by the House of Nerdinger. Some of you might know  what drag houses are or voguing houses. House nerding is the same for nerds. Queer, non-binary,  cyborg nerds. So, here we go. We have to ask things. Is something sexy or sexist? Because  sometimes people get something a bit muddled up and they sometimes think something that  just shows sex, maybe sexist, or the other way round. So, welcome to Face Palm Beach. Oh,  God, this picture is very dark and you can't see it. It doesn't matter. Okay, welcome to  Face Palm Beach. The image in the background is a city, a friend of mine built on Skyline  Cities and I thought it was so nice. And he asked me, oh, do you want, what name should  I give it? I said, call it Face Palm Beach and I can use the picture in my talk at Repubblica.  So we did it. He's also a member of my house. So, I will start with a bit of a perspective.  I hope you can see what this is. It's a very dark picture. Maybe the lights can be dimmed  a little bit. And it's just showing where we are. I was here on planet Earth because  I want to put you into perspective before I really start. Do you know what this is? Anyone  know what this is? Okay. It's Earth Flag, a proposal by the designer Oscar Pernfeld and  it's supposed to represent planet Earth and also the people living on planet Earth and  remind people on planet Earth that we are all living on this planet and therefore the  same and we have to take care of each other and the planet. And a part of the aspect of  taking care of each other and taking each other seriously and having fun on Earth as  human beings is sex and the representation of sex, maybe also in commerce and adverts.  So back to Face Palm Beach. But before we stay here, I want to take you on a little  ride yet. So I'm going to fast forward through the time vortex and we arrive on the 2nd of  May, 2015, 2016 in 500 years and it looks like that. And here in this futuristic city, there's  a teacher walking around with students that have come in from the rural area where they  live sort of a bit like a Star Trek economy, sort of everyone's fine but not everyone  lives in these mega cities and they come to this mega city and the teacher sort of trying  to get the kids to the museum and then the kids suddenly see this advert. It's just there,  this advert and they go talking about a party they want to organise and oh yeah, oh we shagged  each other there and then oh yeah, pretty normal as if the kids were seeing an advert  about sport and talking about themselves playing that sport like playing football or cricket  or whatever. And this is the label, it's about outer space mobiles, yeah, terrassenmobil,  you can say in German. And the teacher just says okay kids, yeah, it's not talking about  your weekend plans but what you've seen here, I can teach you a bit of a lesson because  500 years ago before the shift, before the world became the way we live in it now, things  were a bit different and I'll tell you something about a very normal product like milk, where  500 years ago some people selling milk sold it with sex, not the way we would baby, showing  people having a fantastic orgy in a pool of milk, but it's a bit more one sided that lots  of you know this. I left out a special motive because it was a special e-crap. Anyway, and  the kids say oh yeah, it's only women and the teacher says well, that was times when  people thought sex was something only certain people were interested in and the other people  were supposed to sort of provide it but those people providing it, women, weren't sort of  really interested in sex so they were more passive whereas the men were the ones pursuing  the sex. And then one of the boys says oh well that's boring, didn't they have any cheesecake  boys? So he, yeah, and the teacher says yeah, you're right, sometimes the word cheese  cake boys but mostly for men who like men because people like to presume 500 years ago that  pursuing sex and having fun with sex was something only men would do because if women  do it, there's lots. So we go back in time, back to our timeframe through the time vortex  and here we are again, back here in Berlin and I want to show you a world of fails to  sort of go into the subject now. This has got nothing to do with the floor. It might  be plausible for a bikini advert or for lingerie. Yes, it's wrong she but it's a bloody advert  from people providing floors, selling floors to people who are building houses or sort of  remodeling their flat and there's this woman on the floor or on the tiles not wearing any  panties. I don't know, she'll catch her death on those cold tiles. I wouldn't want to lie  there. And I bet it's just sort of a photoshopped stock picture on there and everything but  I don't want to think of lying on those tiles and look at their comic sons. So the people  making it must have been a bit daft. Or this mixed with racism. Very nice as if people  ordering pizza are only horny men that have a fetish for women that come from a different  part of the world where we are bonkers. Or even this crap. Oh yeah, you're old dog on  now the other new one. Oh lovely lady. Yeah, yeah. Who do you think they're selling it  to? Mordor? Or here this lady on the carpet with her lovely jugs and I think God, of course  people will start shit storms these days in 2016 because they've just had enough of this  narrow minded representation of sex to entice people to buy their products because I think  it was in the beginning of 2016 a great Guardian article said for tech conferences or tech  fairs why don't you not get rid of the booth babes but bring in the booth boys to entice  people who like men, men or women or whatever type of people on the gender spectrum that  will also feel welcome and know that we are meant like me liking men. I meant that if  people sell something to me with a male body and say okay they mean me actually. I like  that. I might even want to buy it even more than just normally. And on the other hand  I think instead of just always wanting to sell with sex you can just have a couple even  if it's a bit heteronormative but you can sort of think a little bit further than the  tip of your nose maybe just one inch and it would help and maybe prevent you from getting  a shit storm. Or you could do it even nicer and one of the most inclusive things is selling  things with cute animals like cats. Everyone likes cats and I think people look at it,  the face of a cat is something especially from people on the internet are instantly  drawn to cats, dogs, cute animals, big eyes, owls or whatever and it works and it won't  give you a shit storm. And Mr. Marcia has also said that okay after especially what  happened in Cologne that he wants to sort of spark a debate and also maybe pass a law  now to ban sexist adverts in Germany. I think it was Friedrich Hein Kreuzberg where it  is also already banned here in Berlin, is that right? And did it work? Okay. That's what  I thought because the debate has to be a bit more nuanced than just ban something and you  have to also know what sexist and what's not and talk about it. That's what I want to do.  So we will talk about what is sexist and here we go into a bit of a grey zone because like  I said just because something has sex in it, it doesn't have to be sexist. It's like these  brutalist buildings. It's nice to look at lots of grey in there but it's not black or  white. So this advert for example I saw that at a gas station when I was driving down to  the Easterheg in Salzburg and a friend said look at that, that would be something for  your presentation. They were right because it's showing men and women having fun. Okay,  it's a cigarette advert. I don't care but it was really just showing people having fun.  Maybe even you can see these washing machines and you see here all it's about them going  in the rain and then going to the wash salon and then having it, their clothes maybe in  there and they've somehow got shopping carts, I don't know why and they're having fun. But  the good thing is you can see men and women equally represented as something fun and sexy,  lively, I like it. Or this company that sells liquorice. I don't like that stuff but my  partner does. But I've always seen their ads and they started, I think that was a couple  of years ago with Dom's a bit kinky because the black, liquorice and the latex and leather  is okay and it wasn't really offensive. I thought it's just maybe sexy but not sexist.  And some other things they did like with a cute animal as I said, with a cute raccoon,  well executed and then I saw this this year. It was on the 8th of March. I was riding home  with a colleague after we'd encountered some blatant sexism, really stupid sexism and I  saw this advert and I thought, oh my God, that's so great. It's doing exactly what most  other adverts are doing with female bodies, doing it with a beautiful male body and I  looked it up online and there were discussions and there was lots of people were saying and  I found that interesting, oh, why isn't there an offshie about that one? Why aren't people  giving the company a shitstorm because of sexism? That's not how it works because showing a  man like that can also still imply something sporty, fitness, I don't know what, but not  only just sexualization, that's reserved for women. But people see something naked and  equated no matter what it is. Oh, it's naked, it must be sexist. No, that's wrong. It's  the context that it's in and you might have it disembodied there which mostly with the  female body is demeaning, but with a man it's a bit of a sort of, yeah, it's got a different  context and a different feel and it also sets men who may see it and they think, oh God,  I don't know what we might feel if I just see this disembodied man. And this advert too is  something that I found interesting. People thought this advert for this roller skate  night in Dusseldorf was sexist. In fact, it's just showing this woman in a sporty outfit with her  partner apparently also in shorts, he's cleaning her roller skates. I don't think that's sexist.  Do you think it's sexist? It was just this knee jerk reaction to showing a woman lying  somewhere, maybe showing a bit of leg, but actually not being really objectified. She's  more shown as a sporty person who's just relaxing after rolling all through Dusseldorf  and being active. That's not a sex object to me. So we must ask, yeah, where is the misogyny and  is there really a conspiracy out there against women? I would say, okay, this lady's wearing a  beautiful tin foil hat, but she shouldn't because at the bottom there's actually a completely  different animal there. And I say this animal is not people thinking, oh, let's make some  demeaning advert so that women feel bad. It's mostly more unbalanced habits and presumptions  about people that make, of course, your everyday work in an advertising agency, marketing or whatever,  easy that you know, oh, it's men, oh, it's women, these and these target groups. So we put this  into that bin, that into the other bin, and we put that into there and job done. And I can go home  and have pizza and watch Netflix. But sadly enough, if you make it easy for yourself, mostly  bullshit comes out. So you have presumptions like this. Of course, you also can call it market  diversification because if you have one toy for girls, one toy for boys, you can say, oh,  yes, can sell more toys to parents that have different types of children, but it's bullshit.  Another thing is something I found in a semester book of my partners, I found that very interesting  just by chance. And it was this, it was sort of this book with all sorts of different types of  info, stunt plan, and so on. There were even cocktail recipes in there. And I saw, going through it,  I saw all these tips about wearing suits. And I thought, oh, where are the business tips for  female, for female attire? There was none in. There was none in for business clothes for people  who aren't men. And then I looked to this stunt plan. And I hope you can see it. It's a bit hazy  here for me. And you can see these sexy looking female students in the foreground of this timetable  and maybe some boys at the background. That's what I would say is the typical knee jerk reaction  because this plan is made for students for the LVTH Aachen. That's an engineer's  university. And you always have this stupid presumption. All of them are men. So all of them  will be men. And that's one of the deep problems why there's diversity strive in the tech community.  And now I come to another thing. These adverts, I also see on my way home in Düsseldorf. They are  for a company that sells suits for men. And you can see the presumption here that a man identifies  himself through women. Totally heterosexual. It's thinking that just because you're a man and you  want to be a manly manly man, so it must be somehow linked to boobs. Or even completely stupid stuff  like that. And I researched and the CEO of the company said, oh no, it's not sexist at all.  It's about showing women having the upper hand and the men being the toys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Old story.  Yes, she's got that upper butt there.  Yeah. This is even worse. There was also a similar thing with musical instruments.  It made me think of a very old meme, this picture. I'm going to show it to you. Maybe some of you  will be thinking, this is a really old meme. I remember seeing it in 1998. Classic.  The next thing is this actually happened in Thailand, I think, where apparently this man  shown here was sexually assaulting a Porsche. So maybe those ads aren't so good after all,  that poor Porsche might have not given its consent. And so you can say this is a one way  straight lead into death because you are doing one thing to death. This thing came to me through  Twitter. It's absolutely crazy. And I asked the people, I think it was on Twitter people from  Pink Stinks who had also tweeted it. And I asked them, well, who made it? Was it an agency,  a small agency, who made this thing for this butcher shop? And they butchered their own ads  for finding young employees and to learn the art of selling meat in a shop. So you can stand there  in a bikini with a big piece of meat. And I found out it was a woman who made it, but the woman  even owning the place. And she gave an interview to Forecourse saying, oh, well, I just wanted it  to be a bit cheeky. But not thinking one step further because she could have gone and had the  same pose with a young man and it would have been like Adam and Eve of meat. Not sexist,  just funny or maybe a little bit tasteless, but not sexist. The same thing here, this is something  that spawned a lot of strife. There's a long story behind this one. Oh, this is going to be funny.  I come from the black forest. So I thought, oh my God, it's the same old thing again, showing a  woman. They could have just had the same thing with the male thing and thought of maybe big  pine cones and whatever can be long and large, like the trees in the black forest.  Have you seen the trees in the black forest? They are long and large.  Now then, well, actually, I was told when I saw this, well, actually, the idea for this  ad came from a woman. You must understand, young lady. So please lighten up. It is all in the  ment. Ironically, it's supposed to be cheeky. So my dear, don't take it so serious. This actually  makes fun of sexism and you should actually like that. So it's actually doing what you want and  shut up and don't be such a killjoy. I swing both ways. I like Star Wars and Star Trek. I'm star by.  Oh, I love Cisco. Anyway, it goes back to this city of Traberg in the black forest because  it was a woman who made it a young designer, a student from Traberg. In the black forest,  a beautiful city and it has a very famous waterfall, very beautiful, very scenic. And I  actually, even when they were as a teenager, was 13 with blue hair, just getting into electronic  music and we were in this youth hostel and it was terrible. We were woken up every morning  with the Gypsy Kings. All of us were going crazy. And another thing that they did in Traberg was  in one of the communal park houses. There was this weird corner parking space where the burgamizer,  the mayor said, oh, it's so hard to get into. It's not for women, it's a men's parking space. So  yeah, of course, women can't get in there. This woman could. So the burgamizer asked,  and I think it was a pensioner to paint this. He didn't enjoy doing it, but he did it. But  it's a bit botched, isn't it? It looks stupid. It doesn't even look normal. It looks like something  a child painted. It reminds me of this. I instantly thought of that. It's botched Jesus,  potato Jesus, I think it's called. So other people came there and sort of painted over the woman.  So it just looks like a normal, scenic, painted, weird landscape. Next thing is something that  happened near Dusseldorf with the coffee truck. Coffee company, selling coffee to companies,  to other companies, mostly secretaries ordering the coffee with a gay driver who had been there  for 20 years even, had this. The boss wanted the trucks to look a bit more interesting.  The driver refused to drive that car. They ended up in front of court. The owner of the company  lost his longtime employee and a lot of customers were unhappy, whereas they could have put something  like that on there too. Easy does it. And the comments section in Werben und Verkauf  and three comments, I picked this up last week, you can read that comment section.  The company should think about the people buying it instead of having one weird person,  the boss here, deciding to put on this bullshit because it seems they might have been into  cartooning. You know what cartooners are like. This, on the other hand, is a better example  for having a cleverly done delivery van from Russia where it really looks as if there's a  huge loaf of bread in this van. It's awesome. People will look at it. Is that glass? Is that a big,  oh no, it's a painting. Awesome. So you can strive for progress. You don't have to be perfect.  And I've got some examples for great sexy ads now. This is an agency from New York that sort of  rebranded itself and the owners, the people running it, decided to do it, sort of show themselves  naked, fresh start, and went to the gym and went through all sorts of weird regimes to become fit.  Look good for this campaign. And I must say it's really, really good because it's men and women,  of course, okay, they're able-bodied. They are very fit. It's a certain type of body that they had  to put a lot of effort in, but it's still an evenly showing people being sexy, being alluring,  and not just female bodies as meat. The same thing, the same photographer was also for Equinox,  a luxury gym from the States. And they had this very sporty but sexy campaign after they had  this campaign shot by Terry Richardson. It reminds me a bit of Lady Gaga, but the next one is  really, really silly. Look at that. The way the woman is like this crab on the floor and the  man looking at her like some derpy, herpy derpy. That was my reaction. It's just stupid. But afterwards,  they changed it and wanted to show people look. It's still looking sexy, but men and women more  diverse and something like this came out. And I actually like looking at these ads, or even  something like that, another orgy, but it's people together having an orgy and they look very good,  they've all been to the gym and they've not had a lot of donuts to eat and they look awesome.  So these examples are great. Another thing is you just need more diversity, also concerning bodies.  Sports Illustrated has their famous swimsuit issue now with the plus size model. They're getting there.  And there's also this thing that they sort of getting these realistic comparisons that you  know with female bodies and Photoshop, they're doing the same with men now. So you can notice that  it's better to show someone sexy, maybe even sporty, but have more diversity in there so  that people can recognize themselves in the brands and know, oh, okay, I can maybe go to the gym and  look good, but hey, there's someone a bit bigger, a bit smaller, and so on and there's more identification  there. So the bottom line is if you want to sell with sex, think inclusively. Try and just think  more than just in your normal boxes and if you don't know, if in doubt, just use your fucking  product or if in doubt, use a cute animal. And now I just want to also say the most important thing  is talk about representation and forget that sex is something that only straight men look at  and start thinking of balancing because one example is the series Outlander about a woman  going back in time to 18th century Scotland. They had a revolution on the screen showing  beautiful sexy man in a set, several sex scenes in one episode, the wedding episode, watch it,  it's revolutionary. It's anti-gamers, there's still violence in there, there's lots of whiskey  drinking and sexy people, but not just women. And so if you start thinking about more perspectives  and more different views of sex, you can stop having this typical type of strife where people  are bickering about, hey, Mimi, you're being so speasing as you say in Germany, you don't want  sexy adverts anymore or how Taniqo the editor of Bildzeitung and I think what she said there was  terrible, I don't begrudge anyone, you can have your own self-help group, she said that to stop  Bailed Sexism, the campaign to stop having page one or page three girls, which I think is in itself  a good thing, I signed their campaign, but I think you also have to think of the other side and say  maybe we can have sex but invite the boys along the girls or we just don't do it. So  girl, Taniqo, think before you speak and insulting people that want to make things better.  So I want to leave you just with the thought that being more diverse and thinking about how  you concoct an image, you can stop having a shit storm just because you do the knee jerk naked woman  on a floor, you can maybe just put a couple on there, put a cat on the floor or maybe show  I don't know, parrot's drinking coffee, it's more interesting. That I think was it, thank you very  much. Do we still have time? Okay, so maybe short Q&A, great. Any questions? We still have three  minutes I was told. There at the back. Stop microphones coming. But actually,  but actually this is the one and only question because we don't have more time. Okay,  just briefly you mentioned in the beginning after showing Haiku Masa and the law thing  that it's important to have a definition of sexism. Yes. And then it's not the easiest way to just  prohibit things. So I was wondering if you could expand a little bit on those two parts. Well,  that's what it was about. It was this talk was about the alternatives for forbidding things,  this whole talk. Okay. Thank you.
re_publica_2016___Elle_Nerdinger__Sexy_or_Sexist__Ads_on_the_Facepalm_Beach_0_503.png re_publica_2016___Elle_Nerdinger__Sexy_or_Sexist__Ads_on_the_Facepalm_Beach_504_1259.png re_publica_2016___Elle_Nerdinger__Sexy_or_Sexist__Ads_on_the_Facepalm_Beach_1260_4463.png re_publica_2016___Elle_Nerdinger__Sexy_or_Sexist__Ads_on_the_Facepalm_Beach_4464_5387.png re_publica_2016___Elle_Nerdinger__Sexy_or_Sexist__Ads_on_the_Facepalm_Beach_5388_7463.png re_publica_2016___Elle_Nerdinger__Sexy_or_Sexist__Ads_on_the_Facepalm_Beach_7464_9467.png re_publica_2016___Elle_Nerdinger__Sexy_or_Sexist__Ads_on_the_Facepalm_Beach_9468_21059.png re_publica_2016___Elle_Nerdinger__Sexy_or_Sexist__Ads_on_the_Facepalm_Beach_21060_21239.png re_publica_2016___Elle_Nerdinger__Sexy_or_Sexist__Ads_on_the_Facepalm_Beach_21240_21359.png re_publica_2016___Elle_Nerdinger__Sexy_or_Sexist__Ads_on_the_Facepalm_Beach_21360_27047.png re_publica_2016___Elle_Nerdinger__Sexy_or_Sexist__Ads_on_the_Facepalm_Beach_27048_30395.png re_publica_2016___Elle_Nerdinger__Sexy_or_Sexist__Ads_on_the_Facepalm_Beach_30396_30467.png re_publica_2016___Elle_Nerdinger__Sexy_or_Sexist__Ads_on_the_Facepalm_Beach_30468_30563.png re_publica_2016___Elle_Nerdinger__Sexy_or_Sexist__Ads_on_the_Facepalm_Beach_30564_31199.png re_publica_2016___Elle_Nerdinger__Sexy_or_Sexist__Ads_on_the_Facepalm_Beach_31200_42491.png re_publica_2016___Elle_Nerdinger__Sexy_or_Sexist__Ads_on_the_Facepalm_Beach_42492_45239.png re_publica_2016___Elle_Nerdinger__Sexy_or_Sexist__Ads_on_the_Facepalm_Beach_45240_45336.png