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Not to be outdone by Bud Lite, Miller Lite has apparently been running their own "woke" beer advertisements: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_NtBQWZqaHo
IMO the campaign here is actually clever, take this "bad" thing, use money to buy it, and turn it into a "good" thing. Whoever came up with this idea: cool idea.
But here's my question: is any of this old "bad" stuff actually bad? Let's look at contemporary things like onlyfans, instagram, tiktok, the hundreds of reddit 'gonewild' type porn forums, etc. It seems to me that many women, given the chance, enjoy wearing bikinis, being sexualized, being lusted after etc. Not all women, obviously, since some women don't like this, but...isn't this trying to strip the pro-sexualization women of their agency?
Aside from that, isn't Miller saying that women belong...in the kitchen? Don't go out to the beach and get drunk and have fun. Wear modest clothing (like the person in the ad), stay inside in the dark, and make things for people to eat.
Also: the claim that women were the primary brewers historically, is not only dumb, it's also wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weihenstephan_Abbey?useskin=vector
I thought the ad was interesting, but do not like lite beers, or hoppy beers, and still do not want to go buy Miller Lite, nor do I condone focusing on hops. Aesthetically, I would be happier if they focused more on grains, but I understand that, logistically, a bunch of paper compost won't go very far in farming grains.
Plausibly there are a decent number of women who like showing off their bodies, bikinis, and so on, but dislike a media environment saturated in even hotter, photoshopped women for them to compare themselves to. There has been a big backlash about that over the past several years. It's "bad sh*t" from a female point of view because it makes average women look unattractive in comparison. If a woman puts on a bikini in a culture that's moving from more conservative mores to more liberal ones, it's great if she can get a lot of attention for how daring she is. She probably can't regularly drink more than one or two beers and still look good, though, so she isn't really the target audience of cheap beer ads. It's frustrating if she is expected to look sexy, in a culture moving from more liberal to more conservative mores -- if she looks great, she'll be a bit less attractive than the advertisement behind her, or if she doesn't, she'll be looked down on as frumpy. Maybe the norm is to only sell bikinis, and she has to buy one or face a steep price hike and inconvenience ordering something from a more niche brand, but she's fat or older, and feels awkward and ugly in it.
The woman in the ad is wearing a rather short, tight skirt -- women can be a bit sexy, nobody wants to go full burqa, but she's not sexier than the viewer. Nor is she more conservative than the viewer. The viewer would be in a fair competition with her. A woman who wants to stand out as unusually attractive would like the media women to be in overalls and sweatshirts, for contrast.
They're also having it both ways -- showing the bikini models to get attention, while decrying them as bad sh*t. Encouraging their male audience members to take a look at their older advertisements in order to send them in.
If women stated that the issue was avoiding runaway intrasexual competition it'd be one thing.
But that's not what they say. They say it's bad as such, immoral. Some feminists will even draw a line between this "objectification" and actual violence.
"Ban this ad because other women are hotter than me" is not a sentiment that any woman wants to admit to others or herself, a'la cognitive dissonance. To out yourself as an uggo is to lower your own social status, so I can't really begrudge women for not making that argument any more than I begrudge myself for not making the argument that all gyms should be banned so fewer guys are buffer than me so I can get more chicks. I would like it if they were but I can't make the argument.
We can nevertheless infer that this is their true motive by mapping out their incentive structures.
But are you making the argument that gyms should be banned because of toxic masculinity or [insert made-up argument]? If so, that's unethical, if not, the comparison doesn't work out.
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That was mostly conjecture.
The ad is to some extent an exploration of the question: what if men don't buy cheap beer so much more than women because men in general actually prefer the product more than women, but because they have been marketed to so hard? What if women were pandered to as much as men? Would they be willing to buy cheap beer product, instead of having to make actually different products? This is the main kind of pandering they could come up with, and it's much cheaper than changing the taste or even packaging significantly.
I don't actually know what Miller Lite tastes like, because I'm so certain it isn't for me, I've never actually tried it. If someone poured it in a glass and called it a beer flavored soda, who knows, maybe I would like it? Or at least not dislike it? But I won't try that out, and will continue just buying pre-mixed margarita in the spring and summer, Octoberfest beers in the fall, and mulled wine in the winter. They probably aren't wrong that they have an image problem as much as a taste problem among women and other people who find bikini clad models tasteless. I'm not offended, exactly, it isn't a question of morality, I just know with complete certainty that it isn't the sort of drink people like me choose, and have no reason to choose it, since by all accounts it doesn't taste like much.
Dude.... that's legitimately disgusting. mixing a proper margarita is no harder than warming up mulled wine and significantly better. As far as having never tried a lite beer, are they just not at gatherings you go to? grab one, they're not great but alright and incredibly interchangeable.
In addition to nostalgia, I like that my husband thinks it's disgusting, so it's still there when I want a drink.
I think I have, but a different brand. It seemed drinkable, but not an improvement on soda, or even iced tea.
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Yes, I doubt it will work. Fruity seltzers are a much easier sell.
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I'd be happier with billboards reminding women their primary worth is as wives and mothers.
I'd think being sexy would be less demoralizing than than a PowerPoint / email job billboard but I'm not a woman. Maybe women really identify with Cathy. Ack!
Which would very obviously prove to be even more triggering.
Trying to pander to women's desire to feel empowered and justified by doing whatever they decide to do is a losing game.
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Men also know that height is an advantage and there's always someone hotter. But enough also seem to be reliably triggered enough at seeing Stacy on a Youtube channel saying she won't date a 5'11 man to actually make harnessing their resentment a viable business model for people.
These women also obviously knew that models were much fitter. Apparently them flaunting it still didn't play well.
Making intrasexual competition - or someone's allegedly lower place in the rankings - more salient seems to cause some people to get demoralized, resentful or to try to lash out and control the message. The same basic argument against social media status games in general tbh.
Okay. Then this theory predicts that this'll stop being an issue when the...I dunno, female objectification waterline is brought down to that of males.
I'm not convinced that's going to happen though. As I said: people have an ideological belief that "objectification" is wrong as such. Both ScarJo and Chris Hemsworth were sexified for money (knowing absolutely full well what they were doing), only one of them complains because of little kids will see it*. Such things gain a life of their own. For another, it's a very useful argument. There'll always be people of the sort I describe above. Not sure why they'd put aside a tool.
* Even though Hemsworth's ridiculous use of steroids and refusal to admit it is arguably worse for body image issues due to how little it's interrogated in comparison and how bad the potential health risks of taking these drugs are.
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Well that's a silly way to look at it: in the long term, almost every woman (and man's) worth is in their offspring, their children. Only few exceptional people will have another, greater, impact on the world than their children.
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