Comments on: Why the Target “snow angel” ad matters: Bringing the discussion back to parenting and corporate responsibility

By: Nia

Nia — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:42:01 +0000

Listen I hear what you guys have had to say for us young girls, and personally it’s not helping. The more you put an opinion on things, the more that opinion spirals out of control. If more people put out their opinions of what beauty is, and they start to match, society begins to advertize to the most common denominator. If the media were to crash there would be fewer problems for teenage girls. But if the media were to crash, there goes America’s demographic. We would lose the only thing that makes us one of the top nations in the world. So bar none, the media is always going to shift it’s opinion to try and convince you, and others what to beleive, it’s going to give a somewhat solid veiw to create controversy, and get more media by doing that. America is the modern day version of the Song Dynasty in China. Sure it was mainly women who were objectified in feminine ways, with feet binding, and etc., but men had their masculinity questioned, which is similar to a young girl having her innocence questioned. Mostly it seems to us in society that men objectify women because they have this concept that women should be trophies, but that is not all, society puts around that image for men, that they have to be manly to be accepted also. In all honesty, I beleive that the media only spreads rumors, rumors are not finality, they are not law, but we treat them as though they are. The only way to beat the media is to leave fantasy where it lay, and be exceedingly to grateful what you have. Labels Are all that a language is, they are all that our language is. We have several different ways of saying things to evoke different emotions into people, and this is also why others have so much power. It partially goes back to the media, but the government is also to blame. It has targeted out specific groups of people, and leveled them onto certain trophic levels with their words, and actions. Hoodlum may bring in mind area’s filled with black people, and mexicans who dress a certain way, and act a certain way and talk that way too. This is the type of singling out people do to weed out who they want to be in the top of our society. There may be a few choice people who are weeded out to make things seem fair, but the truth is a system where people are selected to rule over other’s is not fair. We cannot be a beehive, the reason beehives are so weel off is because there is a sense of community, they are all related, and working for a good cause for every one. We do not have that gaol in mind, we act as if we do, but truth is, people on the lowest trophic levels are igronored and it isn’t fair.

By: 318830

318830 — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:19:22 +0000

Correction! I now realize that the said ad was not portrayed above, so I suppose my previous comments refer to the
D & G ad above. As for the Target ad… I see it and she’s on a target!!!!!… no snow… no snow angels… just her spread on a target. I still see it I guess!

By: 318830

318830 — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:09:32 +0000

At the very first quick glance it looked like a women was getting raped, and maybe then gang raped. That was my very first visual response. It doesn’t matter what I see in the ad now, the image still made it’s impact; even if subliminally. About the ad itself… why is the guy pinning her down?… Why does she kinda’ look uncomfortable?… What are the other dudes doing there? What really was the intent of this image, if it wasn’t to stage a rape scene?

By: Sociological Images » TARGETING TARGET

Sociological Images » TARGETING TARGET — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:30:43 +0000

[...] bullseye. I’m just sayin’. And so are some other people (see a random selection here, here, here, and here in the New York Times). Well, Target took at least one of the images down. [...]

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 16:32:05 +0000

Ryan, you sound as though you’re a thoughtful person, “an activist” as you say, as well as a member of the mainstream. If so, you’re perfectly representative of why criticism of this ad is not “overzealous.” I agree: activists must pick their battles. If they choose the wrong thing, they risk alienating the mainstream. But isn’t this the very reason that advocacy of so called unpopular issues is necessary, to educate? At one time segregation was so mainstream, it was codified by law. That didn’t mean MLK shouldn’t have advocated for desegregation. It meant changing peoples’ minds.

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.

By: blue milk

blue milk — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:36:00 +0000

I completely disagree with the view that the problems of innappropriate marketing to and the corporate sexualisation of children is entirely a parent’s responsibility.

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.