F'd Ad Fridays: Hot little Italian number

This Fiat ad has been making the rounds of Copyranter, Adrants, etc., to a mixed reaction.



My reaction is not mixed at all. I hate it. It's offensive to both men and women, and manages to negatively (or positively, if you're a male masochist) stereotype Italians while it's at it.

Steve Hall disagrees:

"It's not offensive in an way, shape or form. It's just a true statement of fact: men are perplexed, dumbfounded and all out distracted when in the presence of a hot woman or a hot car. The ad is a dead on depiction of men and their relationship to women and cars. And that's just the way it is."

I guess I've just never felt a sexual attraction to a car. And I don't find the idea of being with a clearly insane women all that hot, either. I guess I'll be turning in my man card now. But I think this ad is stupid.

Also, the Cinquecento is a small car.

F'd Ad Fridays: Escort Quality, Hooker Pricing...

...Bestial Hangover?

Via Adrants, who says he got it in an e-mail with the pitch "In short, it's high quality like an escort, low cost like a prostitute... but drunk college girls are free!"

Which prompted a commenter claiming to be from either the client or agency responsible to respond, "I guarantee you that no one from our team sent this to you with the comment about college girls - our culture is fun and irreverent, not sexist and lowbrow."

Ummm... good luck with that.

F'd Ad Fridays: Sexy teenage holocaust victim Halloween costume

I don't think you can sink much lower than this "Anne Skank"costume:

Lisa Wade writes in Sociological Images, "The Halloween revelers who made the choice to sexualize and laugh at this 15-year-old victim of the holocaust are graduate students in the Creative Writing program at Florida State University."

F'd Ad Fridays: At Sofitel men stand and deliver, women watch

Feministe has something to say about the main image on Sofitel's consumer site.

Business@Sofitel: Men TALKING! And GESTURING! And LEADING! And women… sitting and listening! And writing down the important things that the talking, gesturing men say! And making the “I am so interested in all of the interesting things you are saying because you are just so interesting” face! And looking really pretty while they do it!

Sounds just lovely. Do pretty women who gaze adoringly at you come standard, or is there an extra cost for that? Is there a discount for uglier ones? Because I’ll totally take uglier ones as long as they can do the “interested” face.

But this is Sofitel we're talking about! It's a man's man's man's world. Seriously. The place is literally covered in semen.

Thanks to @LilMsCreant for the tip.