More Bad Advertising: It's Only Fair to Redress the Gender Balance

I’ve commented on more than one occasion about the pit of sheer, unremitting horror that is Lynx’s advertising department’s gender politics.

It’s only fair that I redress the balance, since I’ve just seen the follow up to AAMI’s awful new advertising campaign.

When Nick and I saw the first one—with the woman directing a passive-aggressive appeal to her boyfriend to take out a personal loan so he could buy an expensive engagement ring and propose to her—we were . . . well, gob-smacked, I think is the only word.

I’ve never had any patience with the “I must be married to anyone, anywhere, it doesn’t really matter, as long as I’m married” attitude that so much chick-lit (and chick-TV and rom coms) seem to feel is the appropriate attitude for women . . . and I have even less patience now that I’m in my thirties and people keep asking me when I’m getting married.

Don’t get me wrong; plenty of people marry because they are in love, and that’s a different issue. I’m not mocking that. But I don’t know anyone who ever went into a jewellry store and recorded a message demanding that their significant other propose and, by the way, here’s the ring I want you to buy me.

But, now, I’ve just seen the follow-up ad. where she’s now “the new Mrs Todd,” but apparently the honeymoon wasn’t up to her standards, so could he take out another loan—but a bigger one, this time, because she’d like to go to Paris.

I don’t think I’ve been too hard on Lynx, frankly. But these ads—these are almost the girly equivalent of the Lynx ads.

If the idea that men will do absolutely anything—including transform sentient beings into automatons—in the pursuit of the opposite sex is the most degrading way of depicting men, then this is the equivalent for women.

Dear AAMI,

You insure my car. Thank you. But this ad. campaign is grotesque. Not all women are passive-aggressive harridans, you know. And, you know what? The marriage angle wouldn’t even bother me—this ad. would be awful under any circumstances—if it weren’t for the media’s increasing obsession with bridal porn, with the trappings of the wedding instead of the ceremony itself.

Dear Woman in the AAMI Ad.,

You might want to consider whether you should have brought up your honeymoon concerns prior to, I don’t know, maybe the honeymoon? Because at this stage, I’m assuming that the next ad. will be you suggesting that Todd takes out a loan because your alimony payments aren’t high enough.