You say that the Target battle is too small; choose an ad like the D & G ad, but again, it is precisely that the Target ad is mainstream that it is relevant. Ads like the D & G ad have far less exposure. The mainstream, as you say, can express its distaste by simply not buying the magazine, etc. But the Target ad was displayed 20’ X 20’ in Times Square and more insidiously in the Sunday circulars that pervade nearly every household in the country. Its ubiquity made it the battleground.

This ad didn’t elicit a reaction from your peers probably because they’re—your peers. Most of my peers think like me too, so everyone I showed the ad to saw offense. This, however, didn’t prove its offensiveness any more than your experiment proved its innocuousness. To understand the offense, whether you see it immediately or not, admittedly takes a little effort, and PEM has provided some wonderful links above that describe the process of deconstructing an ad. Are social critics like Kilbourne, Lukas, and Frith going “overboard”? Are their minds in the gutter? My only suggestion is, before you make this judgment, you should take a look at these critics as well as at the entire canon of media analysis out there. Then perhaps when you show ads like this one to your friends, you can exercise your penchant for activism and change someone’s mind.

As for taking the negative stigma out of sex, this is exactly what criticizing this ad is all about. Take a look at your dictionary. Despite the retailer’s attempt to co-opt the definition, mine has nothing to say about a corporate logo. It merely defines a Target as “an object marked with concentric circles, to be aimed at in shooting practice.” If placing a woman’s crotch, clothed or otherwise, in the bulls eye doesn’t create a negative stigma, what does? It’s not about nudity at all. Splash all the nude women and men around you want, as long as they’re not representing body images that have nothing to do with reality nor are the objects of violence.

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1. This view relies upon a very privelleged definition of home, not all children have fortified home-lives monitored and controlled by their ever-knowing and ever-present parents. Do we not feel any concern for the children who don’t happen to live in families with parents alert to the dangers of innappropriate advertising and with the capacity to control that influence on their children’s lives? And how exactly do you stop this marketing from entering your children’s lives, there is no buy-out option - it is everywhere, it is in public spaces, and it finds ways of entering private spaces?
2. We live in a society, children are not consumer goods to be paid for by parents as part of a user-pays transaction. In this society we are all benefitting from things we don’t directly pay for and we all impose costs that we aren’t directly compensating for either. And I hate to take this line because it is so dreadfully rationalist but we all benefit (financially even) from happy healthy children in our society, apart from anything they are more productive later as workers.
3. A call for limits on marketing methods is NOT a call for oppressive censorship and prudery and any claim to the contrary is in itself oppressively stifling.
4. We’re not talking about the entire world becoming a children’s playground, let there be sex, but lets make it a choice for people whether they want to access this very limited view of sexuality (with a dreadfully narrow range of looks and roles for men and women) which is sold by commercial enterprise, not have it in billboards and children’s t-shirts and play dolls.
5. It is not fair to reduce all accountability to finger-pointing and saying what kind of parent buys these lingerie barbies - the parents who have been immersed in advertising that sexualises everything until they believe that sexiness is the only version of power, of beauty, of fun, of playfulness, of humour, of everything… that kind of parent. And ok, parents are the primary agents responsible for their children, but we all share responsibility with them because we share an ability to influence that child and we also share a common interest with these parents in the outcomes for that child, in knowing that children are safe and ok.
6. Finally, on a personal level, I have no problem with my child seeing a nude body - I have a problem with the fact that she will only ever see nude bodies which have been photoshopped to perfection and that she will see women’s nude bodies constantly reduced to things and not people.

I am all for advocacy, and I would like to believe that the free market works better without excessive regulation. In the case of advertising, I think that what Lisa and PEM is doing should be sufficient because it creates a dialog between consumers and corporations and if the corporations stray too far, the consumer is the one who straightens them out whether through advocacy action or attacking them economically (i.e. boycotting). If the corporation chooses to ignore the consumers, they will suffer and either be forced to change their ways or risk being run out of business.

As I have said before though, you need to be careful as to what battles you pursue, because if you take action against everything that COULD be considered offensive (vice things that would be considered “universally” offensive), you risk alienating the yourself from the majority of the population who would prefer a more moderate approach to things.

I will say that Jennifer hits on something, and that is the role that parents play in all of this. I have been all over the world, and I have seen all sorts of advertising - much of which was over the top risqué, and often times featured nudity and scenes that aren’t even allowed on cable television here in the states… Yet, in those countries there isn’t as big an issue when it comes to sex and objectification. Why? The people I had an opportunity to talk to over there generally explained to me that we’re a bunch of prudes who aren’t taught to respect the body and sex and are instead taught that sex and nudity is “bad” or “wrong.”

An interesting thought. Should parents be putting effort into taking the negative stigma out of sex? I don’t have an answer to that.

And Lisa, I’m with you on the smoking ban thing. I fought the MN ban and I am currently heavily involved in fighting against a Wisconsin smoking ban.