Advertising All Natural Burgers or Women?

Carl’s Junior 2015 Super Bowl Ad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMjoPVY2L1o

Video Summary

The video starts with a large view of a farmers market, a lot of people pre-covid socializing and buying products just like any other farmers market, no one specifically stands out. It then quickly pans to a seemingly beautiful model, Charlotte Mckinney showing mostly her face but also just enough cleavage to get you interested. As she continues to walk with a seducing look on her face, it seems as if all the men try and keep doing what they are doing but they can’t do anything but focus on her.The camera continually changes while she is walking to make her look naked while she talks about how much she loves going natural in the background. Several different sexual codes are enforced throughout this short commercial, including beauty standards, the objectification of women, and pornographic imagery.

Enforcing Beauty Standards

The model chosen is your average model, far from your average woman but in America she is painted out to be the perfect woman. She checks all the boxes White, skinny, blonde hair, and large breasts. She is the type of woman that advertising tells us is the best there is and a woman who looks like her is casted for most roles that involve a “ beautiful “ woman. In a world full of social media, commercials, and music videos these constant reminders to women in America that they don't meet the criteria are not healthy and also very unnecessary. This constant push for the perfect body leads to declining body image among young people in america and could be potentially dangerous because many women who think they need to look like this will do anything to achieve it, and most of them never will. In her film Killing Us Softly 4 Jean Killbourne mentions how we have created a “toxic cultural environment, an environment that surrounds us with unhealthy images and that constantly sacrifices our health and our sense of wellbeing for the sake of profit" ( Kilbourne )

Objectification of Women

In the commercial as the model walks through the farmers market her body parts are repeatedly replaced or covered by products at the farmers market such as an apple. ( see figure 1.) In her writing Three Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt Killbourne explains, "Sex in advertising is pornographic because it dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women, and because it fetishizes products"(Kilbourne 489) The seemingly harmless nod to an apple actually has many dangerous implications. Comparing a woman to an apple objectifies her body and dumbs her down to the simplest object possible. Going back to the last point, it creates a false sense of beauty by comparing the two in an ad because when others try to compare themselves to the same things the models are compared to they may feel less confident about their body. Also this is dangerous for young boys who may begin to compare women to objects and subconsciously dehumanize them, the man in the advertisement grabbed the apple that was supposed to signify her body, so when you make the connection you may begin to think that you can touch her body also.

Pornographic imagery

In one of the final scenes of the ad after the model says a few words sexualizing a burger, she stands with her breast front and center ( see figure 2,) then takes a big alluring bite before making a very seductive gaze at the camera. The position of the camera and the drama of her opening her mouth and biting into the burger makes the scene borderline pornographic. In her writing Kilbourne mentions how ads can be pornographic. I think this is dangerous because not only does it dehumanize the woman in the advertisement, it desensitizes the viewer. Even though for many of us who have grown up seeing these types of advertisements all of our lives this is not anything out of the ordinary, this is not anything good. It is almost sort of a gateway for people of all ages to move on to bigger and more pornographic things. The more little johnny sees advertisements like this the less special they become. Once he sees all of this, he is ready to see something more which leads to a dangerous cycle.

Conclusion

To conclude, to the average person this ad may not be a big deal, but when you dig deeper into it it is extremely wrong and is nothing that should be played on tv. This ad enforces unrealistic beauty standards, objectifies women, and displays pornographic imagery. The combination of all these things leads to a desensitized community and a very threatening spiral.

Works Cited

Kilbourne, Jean. "Three Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt." Rereading America. Eds. Colombo, Cullen, Lisle. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's P. 2013.

Killing Us Softly 4. Perf. Jean Kilbourne. Dir. Sut Jhally. Media Education Foundation, 2011.