Althouse: Nice hair-and-feminism ad from the Philippines.

December 14, 2013

Nice hair-and-feminism ad from the Philippines.

15 comments:

Virgil Hilts said...: A lot of women who looked like these do would never even get hired. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kylesmith/2013/04/04/its-time-for-companies-to-fire-their-human-resource-departments/; 12/14/13, 5:25 PM
madAsHell said...: Labels on women applied by women.; 12/14/13, 5:32 PM
n.n said...: What a strange little world some people live in. Who thinks like this? That said, it does make for an emotionally appealing marketing campaign.; 12/14/13, 6:20 PM
FullMoon said...: A pushy ,vain bitchy asshole is just that, in either gender.; 12/14/13, 6:49 PM
Shouting Thomas said...: You haven't noticed, have you, Althouse, that the opening of the lawyer biz to women en masse has had the same outcome as it does for all professions?

The legal biz is collapsing.

Converting the lawyer biz into a quota, diversity and babysitting biz produced the predictable result.

The Wild West era of the legal biz, before women started pouring in, was interesting and challenging. Women, as they always do, have made the biz boring and focused on security. And the biz is now in a tailspin.; 12/14/13, 7:11 PM
Wince said...: More "Lean In" feel-good propaganda. This time, surprise!, intended to sell soap to women. How 1950s.

What each compliment-pejorative paring implies is that the pejorative threshold is lower for the same quality in women than men.

Maybe. It's naturally more difficult if not impossible to make cardinal comparisons across sexes versus ordinal comparisons within them.

So you also have to look at the pejoratives that are applied to men and women for the same breach.

Women: Bossy; Men: Controlling, dictatorial, oppressive.

Women: Pushy; Men: Overpowering, domineering, predatory, rapey.

Women: Selfish; Men: Egotistical, narcissistic, narrow-minded.

Note: in each case the extreme quality ascribed to the woman tends to go to the specific behavior; in the case of the man, his character. And that may be the source of the alleged double standard: women are being accuse of acting like a man, a/k/a acting like a dick.

The last two societal thresholds with respect to appearance, Vanity and Show-Off, are so much lower with respect to men (usually used to question their manhood itself) that the ad looses all credibility.

But again, the ad is selling soap appealing to the vanity of woman.

Not nice.; 12/14/13, 7:42 PM
Big Mike said...: We see it all the time. Chris Matthews is provocative. Megan Kelly is an ignorant b***h. Just ask any lefty.; 12/14/13, 7:58 PM
David said...: I never got past "lovely" when looking at those ladies.

Which maybe was the point of the ad.; 12/14/13, 9:21 PM
Clyde said...: I found it interesting that the commercial was in English, but upon reading the Wikipedia article about the Philippines (which has 171 living languages), it became obvious why they did it. The ethnic and linguistic diversity there makes the old Yugoslavia look almost monolithic.; 12/15/13, 3:27 AM
Larry J said...: The Philippines has a national language (Tagalog) but a lot of the people speak English. At social gatherings, they often speak a mixture known as "Taglish" where random English words are thrown in. When my wife gets together with her Filipina friends, they often speak very fast and loud with a great deal of laughter. We husbands know to stay away, stay away.; 12/15/13, 8:03 AM
DinobotPrime said...: Larry J
There is Taglish ( Tagalog, which the primary language is spoken and a sprinkling of English words added), Engalog ( English and Tagalog) and Spangalog ( Spanish and Tagalog often spoken by rich mestizo families). As one who was raised in the Philippines, I had seen classmates,friends, colleagues and strangers who added another dialect or two and another major language ( Mandarin/ French/Arabic/etc)to an already confusing mix to basically exclude people from understanding what the heck they are talking about.

In any private function that involves a lot of Filipino women. Husbands, boyfriends or casual male friends often go somewhere where they are not the object of examination, gossip, innuendos and comparisons by these women.; 12/15/13, 2:26 PM
DinobotPrime said...: Larry J
There is Taglish ( Tagalog, which the primary language is spoken and a sprinkling of English words added), Engalog ( English and Tagalog) and Spangalog ( Spanish and Tagalog often spoken by rich mestizo families). As one who was raised in the Philippines, I had seen classmates,friends, colleagues and strangers who added another dialect or two and another major language ( Mandarin/ French/Arabic/etc)to an already confusing mix to basically exclude people from understanding what the heck they are talking about.

In any private function that involves a lot of Filipino women. Husbands, boyfriends or casual male friends often go somewhere where they are not the object of examination, gossip, innuendos and comparisons by these women.; 12/15/13, 2:27 PM
ken in tx said...: The Philippines has three official languages, Filipino—based on Tagalog, Spanish, and English. Now days, English is the de-facto common language. Strangers in the Philippines meeting for the first time will usually use English at first to communicate. It is the one language they will most likely both understand.; 12/15/13, 6:43 PM
Tibore said...: I have always despised the notion that deep, thoughtful consideration was engendered by simply retailing buzzwords in an emotive context. That's both faux sincerity and intellectualism.

While this video's authors are likely proud at creating something they believe is thought-provoking, the reality is that they're just as guilty of overgeneralization and broad-brush depiction as anything they purport to be against. Specifics and context is always key, and simply implying that what's a laudable trait for a man is always considered a bad trait for a woman is blowing right past that nuance and insisting on the very same sort of blanket generalization that is being argued against.

Sinning in the totally opposite direction is not the same as being virtuous.

I'd almost consider this ad to be horrendous, save for the fact that it's too superficial, too empty of genuine substance to assign such criticisms to. All I can say is this is to gender discrimination what Hallmark is to long-lasting loving relationships: Trite, shallow, and representing nothing in comparison other than what people are willing to project on it. And as such, means that it's nothing on its own.; 12/16/13, 12:28 PM
Raven said...: In response to Clyde, LarryJ, and "ken in sc".

We have two official language, Filipino and English.

Not all Filipinos speak Filipino (Tagalog), but almost all can speak or understand English.

We drive on the right side of the road, sing American songs, and watch American movies.; 12/18/13, 6:51 AM