Woo! Start of the week! That means you get to throw all last week’s mistakes into the bin and be reborn as a better person. That’s what I like to think, at any rate. In ‘two things‘ this week we’re starting with the good stuff: a competition in which you can win a Doxy die cast, as well as £100 to spend on more amazing sexy things. Then we’ll move on to something that annoyed me: the McVities ‘girls’ night in’ advert.
The good: win a Doxy die cast + £100 voucher
Doxy is my favourite sex toy in the entire world. They’ve teamed up with two amazing porn performers to make a porn scene which features their toys: the Doxy die cast and the Doxy Don. It’s hot as fuck, and they’re amazing, and to be honest they had me at about thirty seconds in because I got to watch a dude playing with one of my favourite prostate toys and making the kind of faces that mean you can tell he enjoyed it.
Anyway. They’ve taken a still from the film and they’re running a caption competition, which I get to judge. Reply to this tweet to enter, and you could win a Doxy die cast of your very own (in whichever colour you choose), and a £100 voucher (or equivalent in your currency) to spend at any Doxy retailer. Want to join in? Of course you do. Give me fun captions to judge when the comp closes in a week.
You have to enter by replying to the tweet – don’t just comment here because it’s being run by Doxy so a comment here won’t count.
You really should enter our “talk dirty to me” caption competition @girlonthenet is the judge, so you might want to err on the side of filth pic.twitter.com/Qhlpdcmyxi
— DOXY (@Doxy) September 20, 2016
Full disclosure: Doxy are paying me to judge their comp, but I’d have posted this whether they paid me or not, so I’m not sure where the rule lies on sponsored/paid stuff with that. Either way. Better to say it: Doxy gave me some money so I don’t have to eat beans this week. Cheers Doxy.
The bad: McVities explains why women are rubbish
Get a load of this horseshit.
Why, it’s almost like McVities have had a focus group with a bunch of people who have never met women before, and simply guessed at what we might be like by watching late-90s rom-coms. They’ve then multiplied their assumptions by about ten, had a five-year-old write the script, and hired a few actors who are willing to plough through it regardless of how sexist it all is.
Once that was all done, consider this: a team of people sat in the editing suite and chopped it together. Executives and other people who should know what they are doing all approved it. Someone sent it to Buzzfeed, and paid to sponsor it. As recently as yesterday this video popped up as ‘sponsored’ on my FB page, even though thousands of comments beneath it pointed out that it was patronising, stereotyping arse-dribble. No one involved screamed ‘STOP. THIS IS APPALLING.’
Or, more realistically, quite a few people must have said ‘this is appalling’ at some stage in the process. It’s often fun to wonder how sexist marketing makes it out past so many human individuals who in theory have the power to say ‘STOP.’ But if my experiences of office life and creative ideas are even vaguely representative, a manager will have overruled any dissenters because they personally thought ‘patronising girls’ night in’ was a really good way to sell biscuits.
McVities, a word of advice: go find the emails that no doubt flew around the office regarding this project. Find anyone and everyone who thought it was a bad plan, and promote them. Immediately.
13 Comments
I don’t know what I just saw. You’re wrong on one thing, though: McVitie’s are better than Fox’s – which makes this regretful episode even worse.
(Disclaimer: I do not work for McVitie’s; just really, really wish I did)
Noooooooo. Fox’s have thicker chocolate, which is basically my only criteria.
I don’t believe it was meant to offend.
Few things ever are.
Intent is not magic.
Yes, this.
The saddest thing about that video is that it wasn’t even funny. Not a single joke in it. If you’re making an intended viral video, isn’t that falling at the first hurdle?
Anyway, this sort of thing is the background air pollution of the Internet, and you’re not helping by sharing it, even to criticise. Better just to ignore it and let this failure of a campaign die the quiet death it deserves.
Yeah, how’s that working out for you?
OK, so this might be a long one and without wanting to sound like a tutting aunt – I’m surprised at you, SCS =)
Yes, you’re right, there is a lot of tedious sexism around. And to a certain extent sharing it does give it more oxygen. However, I am not a fan of the ‘just ignore things that annoy you’ school, for quite a few reasons.
– Sometimes you do actually need to speak out about something so that other people who might be thinking the same can see that this worldview does not go unchallenged. In the case of this video, I’m delighted that other people have commented to say ‘this is horseshit’, otherwise my initial gut reaction is to wonder if I’m being oversensitive or picky.
– Sometimes saying these things does help challenge the status quo/change minds of people who’d otherwise agree. A person who might have gone ‘haha yes this is what women are like’ may well think twice if they see a deluge of their friends and loved-ones saying ‘blergh this is awful.’ Or, potentially – because I do get quite a lot of visitors who come for the porn but may not have considered this kind of thing before – thinking ‘well my fave sex blogger thinks this is shit, so next time I see something like it I’ll say it’s shit too.’ Thus we help change the narrative rather than just ignore part of the narrative as it happens.
– Sometimes, from a purely personal place, it’s useful and helpful to have a big old rant about something. It makes you feel better and gives other people the chance to sympathise and agree.
– Often the ‘don’t give it the oxygen of publicity’ misses the point above, and ends up actually derailing what can be a useful and cathartic thing for someone. What’s more, it adds another layer of pressure. In this case, not only should women *not* play up to stereotypes as seen in the video, we also need to be careful *not* to get too annoyed when someone makes something like this, at least not annoyed enough to share it, because we’re then playing right into their hands and will be told to step back.
I can see why you think this, and I think a lot of people do. But alongside the points above, here’s my personal opinion: I get annoyed by some things. One of the nice things about having my own blog/twitter/FB is that I can choose when and how to engage with things that frustrate me. I do usually make a judgment call about things I will and won’t share, other times I will more casually chuck something out and say ‘what do we think of this?’
Two Things on monday is a very deliberate choice I made a while ago: I wanted to be able to do more looking *outwards* at stuff that was happening, but I didn’t want to put pressure on myself that if I found something bad I’d have to write an entire, thought-through blog post to take it down: I wanted to give myself a casual space where I could have a little ‘feel-better’ rant or say something funny, and it wouldn’t necessarily have to be a blog post in and of itself. Within that, there’ll be some things that hit what you think is ‘acceptable’ targets and others where you might think it’s unacceptable, which is fair enough. But it is definitely going to annoy me a bit if you think that this is not something I’ve taken into consideration. Hence the long comment =) I’ve taken this into consideration – I always do. And chances are if I’ve posted it anyway it’s because I think it serves my purpose.
End message. And honestly if it were anyone else who’d said that they’d have got a one-liner sarky response. So I hope you can see that my long comment isn’t meant to piss you off – it’s because I respect you and I want you to come round and agree with me =) x
OK, thanks for that – consider me chastened. Points well taken on board, I think.
I guess I was feeling grumpy the other night so made a more kneejerk comment than I normally would. I should have given it a bit more thought before saying something which could be read as ‘oh do be quiet, you whining woman’. Apologies.
I might add, there’s nothing wrong with tutting aunts. We could all use one from time to time. :)
.Google “doxy + wand + porn scene”
..Found results
…Click play
….Oh, God. Instant hard-on
…..Soo glad I have my own office. With a door.
The implication that Geordies are a bit thick and crass and oh isn’t that hilarous also gets on my tits.