Sexist and homophobic Super Bowl commercials
The Super Bowl this year was riddled with ridiculously sexist and homophobic commercials. A few commercials featured women being quickly tackled or pulled off the screen by either men or giant robotic hands, their bodies visualized like dolls being thrown around with little value beyond their physicality. Betty White being tackled in a game of football (Doritos), Beyonce being pulled off-screen by a giant robotic hand (Vizio), and Tim Tebrow tackling his mom (Focus on the Family). What’s so great about a woman’s body being thrown around like that? Are the advertisers expecting me as a straight man to enjoy seeing that? In any other context, a woman’s body being thrown around like that would be VIOLENT. And commercials showing images like this are numbing us to a point of non-reaction when we see acts of even passive violence around us in the real world. It’s not whimsical, funny, or clever. It’s an image of violence, and shouldn’t used to lightly to market chips.