The Losers
Sure, we want her to be pretty…don’t you?
Oh yes, definitely, I want her to look like a Barbie doll, thank you sir.
That’s why we look at her face, her makeup, her complexion, her figure, her weight, her legs, her grooming, her nails and her hair.
What about her breasts? What about her bum? Do you check her between the legs? Best to be safe about these things. Do you check her teeth, including the back ones? Her tongue? Her armpits?
Anyway at least they’re all very white.
I thought we’d left that behind us, and I wasn’t remotely prepared for the backlash.
And, of course, they are “girls”, even though looking at them it appears they are actually women.
The sad thing is that there are still many people who are pissed because they think that they can’t ‘make ’em like that anymore’ thanks to those pesky liberals and feminists. The truth is that todays ads are no less sexist, it’s just the style that’s changed.
I mean, it’s fine to have an employment model that considers physical attractiveness.
What gives me the heebie-jeebies is that it’s put proudly first, the winking in second person, and the infantilization. Even in an imaginary world without sexism, that’d be straight up creepy. In the really real world, though? Shudder. There’s also how looking at other factors at all is framed as going above and beyond. Like, really?
(Also, the editor in me wants to change “19” to “nineteen”. It’s not like they didn’t have space.)
I don’t know; the one all the way to the right looks like she’s about 14.
Crazy ad.
Entirely beside the point, but I’m intrigued by the diversity of hair styles. In a way, it makes the Disney-esque sameness of their faces more disturbing. (No doubt they’ve been directed to have identical gormlessly sad expressions, but look at Tan Suit sitting at the front, and Yellow Blouse behind her. But that’s even further from the point.) If you took the same picture today, they’d all have the same length hair, all of it draped over one shoulder. It seems like the rules for how to feminine are more narrow now, if that makes sense.
Of course, Catwhisperer, that could have been the point. These were the unacceptable women, right? The ones who weren’t enough…pretty enough, sexy enough, submissive enough, compliant enough…hair-conformist enough? So it may not mean anything…but I do think you are right. The rules have narrowed and are continuing to narrow, and are on the verge of being defined by men who identify as women.
Maybe there isn’t all that much hair style uniformity in the real world, but in the slice of the world that wants to be eye candy for airline passengers/for Donald Trump and co there is? It seems to me that in the real world it’s a big grab bag.
Yes, that’s what I was getting at. In the world of “jobs where a woman’s appearance is the main point” there is little room for hair-non-conformity (to continue Iknklast’s excellent phrase-coinage), and it seems to me that right now, the women who would apply for those roles would know better than to turn up with anything other than Beauty Mandate 2020 compliant hair. Plus the other current must-have features i.e. bee-sting lips, massive eyebrows, trowelled-on foundation, and inch-long lashes.
Anyway, who knew Jamie Lee Curtis tried to become a flight attendant before going into acting? (Teal dress, near the back)