Post: #1

Clearly women are apologizing far to much. An its making them less like the strong independent women they should be.

Cliffs: A ad for shampoo that tells women they need to stop saying they are sorry. Even has a cool hashtag.... get that bitch a hashtag, bitches love hashtags.




We’re NOT sorry for being strong and you shouldn’t be either! Watch and share to spread the word #ShineStrong

Post: #2

Believe it or not, everyone's favorite feminist, Jessica Valente, wrote a halfway decent piece in the Guardian picking this campaign apart as cynical corporatism.

Her premise: "The helpful pieces of very public advice thrown at women sure are starting to sound more like orders than encouragement....Because instead of just selling us physical insecurity by implying we're fat or wrinkly, beauty companies are now trying to make us feel insecure about our insecurities – all while giving themselves a pat on the back for "empowering" us to feel better (and collecting our money, of course)."

Full article below if you don't want to give them the Web hit:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree...tene-sorry


Beauty companies now want women to feel insecure about our insecurities
Be sorry. Don't be sorry. Just don't be anything because a shampoo ad tells you to
Jessica Valenti
Theguardian.com, Thursday 19 June 2014 07.30 EDT

Ask for more money. Stop with the "up-speak". Love your body! The helpful pieces of very public advice thrown at women sure are starting to sound more like orders than encouragement. And the latest bit of go-get-'em girl guidance – a commercial from Pantene imploring women to stop apologizing for everything – has just about sent me over the edge. Because instead of just selling us physical insecurity by implying we're fat or wrinkly, beauty companies are now trying to make us feel insecure about our insecurities – all while giving themselves a pat on the back for "empowering" us to feel better (and collecting our money, of course).

Pantene is the most recent company to fall into the "confidence gap": telling women that the source of their woes isn't workplace inequality or crappy partners who don't do their fair share, but women themselves. According to this new dictum, women are self-sabotaging at work, love and life.

The shampoo giant's new ad, part of its #ShineStrong campaign – as in, the shiny hair that you'll have if you buy their product – opens with a question: "Why are women always apologizing?" Viewers are then treated to vignettes of women saying "sorry" for various non-infractions – including, but not limited to: a woman in a business meeting who interrupts a colleague with, "Sorry, can I ask a stupid question?"; a woman who takes back stolen bed-covers from her partner; and a harried mom apologizing for handing a toddler over to dad.

It's hard to disagree with the premise – it's true, these women have nothing for which they need to apologize (and yet many women still do in those situations). The same goes for Dove's incredibly popular "real beauty" campaign – yes, all body types should be accepted and loved. But there's something incredibly irritating, and crass, about beauty purveyors instructing women to "stop apologizing" or "stop hating their bodies" when many such insecurities stem, at least in part, from these very companies' advertisements.

Let's not forget, for example, that Dove's parent company Unilever not only produces the scourge-of-the-nostrils Axe Body Spray – not exactly a bastion of female empowerment – but actual skin lightening creams for women of color. Love your body ... so long as you're white?

And while Pantene got on the feminism bandwagon last year with a commercial about double standards launched in the Philippines, let us not forget their ad in Brazil that used a tremendously large breasted woman to hawk shampoo. (Tagline: "Make sure your hair is the second thing he looks at.")

Besides, maybe I don't want to love my body right now. And sometimes I say "sorry" because, if I don't, the person to whom I'm apologizing will think I'm a pushy bitch. Sometimes being "likeable" – apologizing for "nothing", making our voices higher, not asking for too much at work – is a survival technique for living in a culture that punishes us when we get out of line.

Maybe – just maybe – telling women that they're making a mistake by not personally dealing better with public and social problems is just another way of selling – and materially benefiting from – our supposed shortcomings.

Now, it's better to have commercials that lift women up rather than tear them down. I would rather watch the Pantene ad than any over-the-top sexist spot for GoDaddy. But I don't find anything uplifting about pointing out to women the various ways we're doing things wrong – whether it's the way we talk, the way we work, or the way we look at ourselves.

In the second half of Pantene's commercial, previously-apologetic women revolt. They hand over children, speak their mind at work and take back the covers with impunity – and get rewarded for it by men sheepishly giving armrest space back and a big-spoon cuddle from a cute partner in bed. Victory! If only.

Giving women one-liners and happy endings (and shiny hair) will not solve the problem of workplace gender roles, body image or domestic inequality – that requires a fundamental shift in how we talk and think about women's roles in society. But maybe I will take a cue from Pantene, after all, and "shine strong" by saying that I think their ad is garbage. And I'm not remotely sorry.

Post: #3

(06-20-2014 05:36 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  Believe it or not, everyone's favorite feminist, Jessica Valente, wrote a halfway decent piece in the Guardian picking this campaign apart as cynical corporatism.

Her premise: "The helpful pieces of very public advice thrown at women sure are starting to sound more like orders than encouragement....Because instead of just selling us physical insecurity by implying we're fat or wrinkly, beauty companies are now trying to make us feel insecure about our insecurities – all while giving themselves a pat on the back for "empowering" us to feel better (and collecting our money, of course)."

Yeah, but fuck Valenti. Not only will she complain either way, but she's also one of the narcissists at the center of this factory for empowerment schlock. If she's going to keep churning this vacuous garbage out, I'm only too happy to see it get echoed by someone ramming it back down her throat to make a buck.

Post: #4

Yes, what we need are more women in Western countries to be intolerable twats. Great...

Post: #5

(06-20-2014 06:23 PM)Wadsworth Wrote:  

(06-20-2014 05:36 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  Believe it or not, everyone's favorite feminist, Jessica Valente, wrote a halfway decent piece in the Guardian picking this campaign apart as cynical corporatism.

Her premise: "The helpful pieces of very public advice thrown at women sure are starting to sound more like orders than encouragement....Because instead of just selling us physical insecurity by implying we're fat or wrinkly, beauty companies are now trying to make us feel insecure about our insecurities – all while giving themselves a pat on the back for "empowering" us to feel better (and collecting our money, of course)."

Yeah, but fuck Valenti. Not only will she complain either way, but she's also one of the narcissists at the center of this factory for empowerment schlock. If she's going to keep churning this vacuous garbage out, I'm only too happy to see it get echoed by someone ramming it back down her throat to make a buck.

Right, but the corporatization of feminism might prove to be its downfall. I think her resentment is an indicator of how other women are starting to feel. I think she's defined something that has been gradually building.

Consider: most women took to these feminist ideas in college because they were presented as an alternative to what was offered to them growing up. A lot of the appeal is wanting to be different and challenge the status quo. To raise a finger to the conformist TV commercial culture, for instance.

But now that these ideas have gone mainstream with Pantene, #banbossy, Goldiblocks, and other things, alternative-minded women -- always the biggest supporters of feminism -- are finding this is the new conformity. I's now: man up, women, or else! They're now the establishment or -- worse yet -- pawns of the corporate establishment. And since feminism has roots in Marxism, this is an uneasy coupling.

Girls are growing up being hammered about how to be good little corporate drones. Don't think they're not starting to question why they're not getting any choice in the lives their Yuppie parents, teachers, and corporations have planned out for them.

They now need to find another alternate culture -- in much the way hippies did when the media usurped that culture in the '70s and '80s.

Companies like Pantene are unwittingly exposing feminism as corporatism. I'm wondering how many other women will begin to think "I'm not going to be a tool for some corporation -- and since when is working for them 'liberation'?"

Maybe this is why we're seeing a rise in Mad Men-era retro-chic. This might be the alternate culture that's starting to build and why we're seeing such rage from thirtysomething women who were sold "the dream" and are now having buyer's remorse.

(On a more sour note, this also might be why feminism is now obsessed with alleged rape culture. Besides creating hysteria for those who profit from it, this part of feminism gets to stay alternative by recasting mainstream culture as villainous. I wonder how long until they're exposed by statistics.)

Post: #6

Good for them then. Men have been drinking this poisoned corporate chalice since the 1970s. Now that women are finally realising the same thing, they want to cry about it (whilst simultaneously throwing men under the bus when they make the same complaints)? Fuck them. Drink up ladies.

At the basest level, women could just stop buying shit, right? It's not men driving these corporate profits, given that women spend something like 70% of a household's discretionary income. As Chris Rock so eloquently put it once, "If a man could fuck a woman in a cardboard box he would". Men don't need all of this consumer shit*, so this is an own goal on the part of women. My heart bleeds.

*On the other hand, I would say that men do actually value real works of art, engineering, science and technology -- the highest of high culture -- far more than women.

Post: #7

I think you guys are being a bit optimistic about women comprehending the bigger picture. Women are followers and conformists deep down. There are no great social movements or revolutions led by women. The few outliers you see in history were mostly used as pawns or martyrs of greater men behind the scenes. Even women who may see a little of what's behind the curtain aren't strong enough to go against cultural headwinds even though they may complain about it

Post: #8

In the future, I predict that the Twitter hashtag will be one of the most lampooned historical artifacts from this decadent era. Our descendents will laugh themselves silly at the fact that people actually engaged in something called "hashtag activism" and that people took it very seriously.

Post: #9

(06-20-2014 10:38 PM)scorpion Wrote:  In the future, I predict that the Twitter hashtag will be one of the most lampooned historical artifacts from this decadent era. Our descendents will laugh themselves silly at the fact that people actually engaged in something called "hashtag activism" and that people took it very seriously.

I think its the dumbest shit ever and refuse to get on board with it. Honestly I'm not even sure what a hashtag does. From the little I do know of it, it makes it easier to search for something, or you can search for hashtags an the people who use the ones you search post or pics will show up. I can't take anyone serious who is always #GymFlow #SunShineTanning #LuvMyBitches and all this other stupid shit I see on my facebook. Even gayer is the guys who are using them.

Am I just getting old? My parents thought a lot of shit I did was dumb.... but I mean this social media, hashtags, selfies and shit is out of control... And the songs, the lyrics of a popular song I hear on the radio go as such

"Hot damn it
Your booty like two planets
Go head, and go ham sammich
Whoa, I can't stand it
Cause you know what to do with that big fat butt
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle"

Sure the beat is catchy but is that the best fucking lyrics they could come up with??? I really think we are headed to the world displayed in the movie Idiocracy

I used to let it get me down, now I just laugh and keep working on improving myself and looking forward to my future filled with traveling, adventure, and fucking girls.

Post: #10

delete

Post: #11

#You'llBeSorryIfYouDon'tMakeMeASandwhich!

Post: #12

This utter horseshit and feminists should be angry that a corporation is trying to make money off of them by telling women not to be polite.

Men say "sorry" like that as well.. It's a way of showing respect.

This ad is the epitome of the root cause of problems we have in our culture.. The dido living of class, respect, civility, etc.

What's wrong with making it clear that you respect someone enough to acknowledge that you just cut them off mid-sentence?

It's just good manners.

Post: #13

"I would be sorry that I hit you with my car, but Twitter says to not be sorry."

I agree, Twitter is this time's version of flagpole sitting.

Post: #14

Wait, young women are having a crisis of apologising too much?

Pull the other one, lol

My jaw would drop these days if I hear an apology from a woman (either to me or anyone else), that isn't "I'm sorry, but..."

Post: #15

Not reading the article.

The author, Jessica Valenti had another article in the Guardian(UK, left wing publication) about how 'stay at home' fathers were only doing it because they were off sick from work and other spurious reasons.

another article she wrote claimed that women like The Walking Dead because it doesn't have rape.

Just another bitter, under-sexed feminist.

Post: #16

Shampoo???