1- Lotto ad
It seems that the Directorate of the Lebanese Lottery is not only giving itself a reputation of corruption, but also of the trafficking of women’s breasts and replacing them with lottery balls in ads, in the name of the Lebanese Republic. And while we’re at it, we would like to send our regards to Al Akhbar newspaper – who pretends to be a pioneer in defending women’s rights – for being the first to publish this ad.
2- Cablevision
Cablevision has decided to sell each two for $15, what could you possibly want more? However, Cablevision didn’t clarify whether they are giving buyers the right to choose their preferred features: blonde, brunette, redhead…
3- Abed Tahan
Abed Tahhan thought at length, and after prolonged pondering, they finally came up with the most innovative idea for mommy to remember you twice a day! Buy her a vacuum cleaner and a washing machine, and that way, she can spend her entire day at home washing your clothes and sweeping your messes, and remembering you! Is there anything better than that?! I mean, what is the point of a mother, at the end of the day? Honestly, Abed Tahhan is one of the many companies that make us wish that there was no such thing as Mother’s Day.
4- Get The Breast
“Fabulous” takes you directly to the point: Would you like to have a degree in engineering? Your only shot at that is to “engineer” your breasts, to inflate and lift them. Great! And now, you’re officially and engineer and you deserve to wear the helmet on your head.
5- Pharmacies
Lebanese pharmacies are an eternal showcase for advertisements that are unhealthy and damaging to women’s relationships with and acceptance of their bodies. All they are concerned with is slimming us down and competing over who will put the bigger and more violent ad to sell us products whose origins we know nothing about; all with no Ministry of Health monitoring. See Kherr Berr’s article on pharmacies here.
6- Fiordelli
This Fiordelli ad is a great example of women in demeaning situations. For example, we cannot help but ask, “Why is she crawling towards his feet – or rather, his polished shoes, while he is sitting like the king of the jungle in all his glory and grandeur? And why is she in such a submissive position, while he is in a dominant one?”
7- Whirlpool Electronic Ghasseleh
This ad is the perfect example that leads to the question: Why is the woman taking off white, sexy lingerie, to sell us a washing machine? The answer is: Whirlpool decided to use this unnecessary scenario, which is completely unrelated to their product, in order to stimulate passersby’s imaginations concerning the female body, in order to sell a washing machine.
8- Pastai
Do you think their food is as bad as their advertisement? See Kherr Berr’s Pastai article here.
9- Klynn
What is your comment on this picture?
10- Bellusi
What is your comment on this picture?
Related posts:
17 Comments
FYI a large number if not most of graphic designers in the country are women. so I bet you that many of these “offensive” billboards were designed by women themselves!
You people are in the business of getting offended! Women in Lebanon will be better off if you start using your resources to help women in real need like victims of rape or domestic violence rather than screaming wolf every time a woman is shown on a billboard.
Wow Samantha I was just going to say that my gf is in graphic design, she used to work for Fioredelli and she chose that ad and made it! She chose the pic did some stuff to it ect…
We laughed really hard when we saw it here, btw she is in noway submissive or dependant.
My point is, kherrberr is overeacting, by far, and overanalyzing. They are somewhat showing that they themselves have a sexist mindset, to have seen some of these ads as waay too offensive, whereas independant strong women didn’t even notice because they don’t really care. If an ad can hurt you that much, you are very very weak, it is mostly your fault.
hello,
I have a little advise for you, get a life.
I surfed your blog and noticed that all you do is post stupid comments on ads that YOU think may be offensive to women. You are not speaking to defend women in general! nobody asked you to! All you did is post the thing that you personally find offensive either cause you have a psychological problem or you are so insecure that a smiley face can be offensive to you.
I personally Don’t find them offensive but rather funny! I know myself and as a woman i’m confident enough not to get emotionally damaged by these ads. and you should know for a fact most ads are created by FEMALE graphic designers.
I support H&m’s use of virtual models, i am a 3d modeler myself. Make use of technology since it will make business easier.
Stupid Blog…. Reading it is a waist of time
The irony of this website is that it is probably set up by women who out of frustration of some sort oppose any popular ads. These ads are mainly developed by successful self determined modern women who work in graphic design or advertising. These ads are appreciated by general population who are 51% women. Talk about “Royaliste plus que le Rois or in this case La Reine”
Stop trying to criticise this industry where Lebanese women are excelling and working at worldwide standards. This is a one Billion per year industry in Lebanon that creates jobs, real jobs for our people. How many jobs have you created for women or men. Criticisng is easy however it has to be constructive not distructive. I would like to see you create successful ads that work in real life.
Dear all,
Thank you for your comments, although it looks a bit weird that all of you are stating one opinion in very similar words
First of all, women can be sexist, so it does not change anything if the designers were women. A sexist ad is a sexist ad whoever the designer is.
Second of all, @Samantha, who told you we are not working on Family violence law and on fighting sexual harassment? We are even protesting in front of the Ministry of Interior next Saturday under the title of #Fightrape, and we hope you join. Here’s the link https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/283385688373672/
@Jonathan, good for your gf that she’s strong and dependent, a little advise, let her give some of her strength to other women instead of sending them submissive messages.
@Elise and Jonathan: This discourse of “if you are strong enough you will not get offended” is so typical and childish to be honest. I would say back,”you, if you were not really touched by our comments, you would not have replied with such aggressive comments”, but this won’t lead anywhere. There is a reality in Lebanon called:Ads and songs ARE offensive to women, many people agree with us, they even protested with us against sexist ads and songs back in 2009. Being offended has nothing to do with weakness, rather than it has to do with the reality of having to see sexist ads wherever we go, for the past 100 years! If other people, including you, disagree with us, or do not see anything wrong with these ads, then it’s either their opinion and we respect it, or that they are SO used to this sexist system, that they stopped seeing how wrong it is.
@Tom: it’s “waste” of time.
@boulmish: The last thing we want is a lecture on “how independent Lebanese women are excelling in this industry”. We do not know if the designers are women, we don’t know the source of your statistics that “51% of women appreciate these ads”, can you please link us to the study? Can you please link us to the study that states how poor people who do not belong to the very elite, are benefiting from this “BIllion Dollar industry”? Please give us the privilege as Lebanese women, to speak on behalf of ourselves. These Ads IN NO MEAN, contribute to our “liberation”, nor to our fight for our rights. We still live in a country with no law to protect us from rape, harassment, or family violence. We can not pass our nationality to our children. We are discriminated against in contracts and in workplace. We have to deal everyday with a sexist society around us, and you ask us to “get a life,snap out of it” and just be thankful for this industry that contributes to strengthening sexism and re-assuring its presence through subliminal messages in ads and songs? These ads that we face every day, push a huge sum of our women to plastic surgery, and to complications in the relationship with their bodies,and to unhealthy diets, and to feeling inferior. Lebanon is number 1 around the world, in the number of plastic surgeries performed every year! This is really sad.
Hope to see you all around, and in our protest on Saturday Jan14.
Best,
Kherrberr Team
“We still live in a country with no law to protect us from rape, harassment, or family violence. We can not pass our nationality to our children. We are discriminated against in contracts and in workplace. ”
This has nothing to do with the ads, this is our back-warded law, supported by religious leaders. Please kindly attack these religious leaders, or actually religion as a whole.
The songs? I am sure you are referring to Iskandar guy. Firstly, this isn’t music, its crap.
Society? The real catalyst for our society being so oppressive to women is not mere ads, but religion. A secular state is the answer. You have such ads in Europe and the US with far less sexist thought. Why religion? Have you ever thought why the all the prophets are men? God’s child was a man? All popes, priests, sheikhs and imamas have to be men. Where is the woman’s role? In a deeply religious society, THIS affects the mentality far more than ads. So please, fight for a secular state.
Lastly for ads portraying slim bodies ect… I weigh 90kgs, I have a beer gut, no muscles whatsoever. Please explain why, when I see underwear ads (men with amazingly fir bodies), I don’t feel bad? The only feeling I get is, hey my shirt is getting tight, maybe I should exercise a little. Or I can’t do any sport for more than 15mins, maybe I should be more fit. The idea of a fit body like these ads does not cross my mind. Why? Because this is not how I expect the world to see me. This is not what is attractive or unique about me. I couldn’t care less if some guy has a more fit body. Simply because my attraction has to do with my character. Same applies to women whom I am attracted to. I was never interested in these fit women. Not that I don’t like perfect bodies, simply at some point (in terms of beauty and fitness) improvement of looks become far less important than improvement in character, intelligence, SENSE OF HUMOR, and just plainly: “fun to be around”. Sure there is a minimum, but that also goes along with a minimum fitness for your health! I will NEVER say it is ok to be overweight, I BARELY am, and I feel how little stamina I have, can you imagine if I get worse and older, how weak my heart will be?
Each person, (man or woman) has in his mindset a minimum bar set for looks, the higher it is, the less emphasis that person has on character, now my question is to you, do you really want to be around anyone who is”dumb” but beautiful? I hope you got my point that, when you strongly believe that looks, are not that important (again I admit there is a limit), you will see these ads the same way I do.
Stop reminding women that these ads are offensive for such reasons, and you can finally let the so called sexist meaning of these ads fade away, however you keep reviving them, because I am 100% sure that many women don’t even think about their fitness when they see these ads. To them they only see the bikini or whatever clothing it is, really.
Based on your concept, i feel there is sexism in your reply kherrberr! you replied to jonathan alone, to tom alone and to boulmish alone BUT you didnt give me a reply uniquely for me. you included me with Jonathan. As a woman i feel offended. Don’t i deserve an answer on my own or should i always be included with a man?!?!
Yeah Elise is right, you shouldn’t include her with Jonathan in the same reply, you should have included her with Boulmish and Tom coz it’s same person! Same IP! How lame!
I wonder who’s the person who needs to get a life!
Well astrae why would i comment under different names!My name is Elise and I’m proud of myself, my name and not afraid to hide behind anything! FYI logically speaking, you know houses are usually made to contain more than 1 person!
@KherrBerr
I surfed through your website and I didn’t see that you were part of Nasawiya, I thought you were an independent NGO. maybe you should make this affiliation clearer.
But my point is that what you guys are doing on this website is what I like to call “petty feminism” and it contribute nothing to helping to solve real problems that women are facing every day.
“no law to protect us from rape, harassment, or family violence. We can not pass our nationality to our children. We are discriminated against in contracts and in workplace.”
The problem in Lebanon is not the lack of laws, it is the lack of enforcement and this is a problem that is facing our society as a whole. You can get your car stolen and all what the cops do is tell you “tough luck”! secondly, laws do not protect us from rape it simply punishes criminals, you can ask for tougher punishments, but many studies have shown that this does not decrease crime rates.
Secondly, when you say:”Ads and songs ARE offensive to women, many people agree with us”
Can you please show me the polls that proves that the majority of Lebanese women are offended by them.
how do you suggest we solve the “problem” that this website is dedicated to? ban the use of beautiful women on billboards? or maybe a pre-approval process? I am interested in your suggestions.
Finally a word of advice, please don’t follow in the footstep of some feminist movements here in Canada where they are more concerned about imposing restrictions on and even hatred of men rather than liberating women.
@astrae
as a computer engineer I would like top point out that same IP does not mean same person. my IP address, for example, is being used by 20 different computers! especially in Lebanon where some ISPs sometime funnel there traffic through a single proxy. My company is actually involved in a lawsuit that resolve around this issue.
@Samantha,
Supporting a cause or a protest does not mean we are “affiliates” of Nasawiya. We are feminist activists who would support any feminist cause.
Id you consider tackling sexist and racist ads and songs and pop culture, and calling for a change in the current extremely patriarchal media discourse, “pretty feminism” , then be it. We respect your opinion, but we do not agree. We believe Media is a very powerful tool that forms the public opinion, and the views of future generations, especially songs and arts.
The problem is Lebanon is both, the lack of laws and the lack of enforcement. We DO lack laws to protect us from family violence, and to let us pass our nationality, and we DO lack decent laws to fight rape. These are facts. We are not calling for tougher punishments, we do not believe in torture nor in death sentence. We are calling for an efficient system that supports rape survivors, provides them with psychological support, health care and everything they need. We are calling for a whole new social system that does not treat female bodies as public properties that can be harassed and raped, and just silenced because of fear of the “scandal”. These views on female bodies should change. Changing them happens through activism such as ours, through changing media discourse, and the way ads portray female bodies and abuse and violate them. This makes a difference.
We are not claiming to represent the “majority of women”, we state our views, many people agree, many people disagree, like yourself, and in both cases, it is fine. It is important to raise a dialogue, and to stir static situation. You can check the comments, the protest we organized in 2009 against sexist ads and songs, you can see the media attention we got when we first voiced our opinions against such reality, for the first time in Lebanon. It proves that this subject NEEDED to be opened.
As for what we suggest, we definitely do not suggest restrictions and censorship. If anything, we suggest total removal of ALL forms of censorship. All of them. What we suggest is to make a change through this: monitoring sexist ads, songs, pop culture, shows, statements etc., and criticizing them from a feminist lens, to get our message to all designers, ad agencies, artists, song writers etc., that there are people who disagree with them, and are offended or damaged by their messages and ads. Maybe this will make them reconsider what they choose to say. Also, we hope to gain more support from people, to hopefully get to a place where we can call to boycott sexist and racist companies/media.
We really are not men haters, we have many men among us. We do not follow the steps of any foreign movement. We make our own movement, and this monitor was the born from our very daily life, from the songs we hear on the way to work or university, from the ads we see on the way to Tripoli or to Saida. It is very local, who knows what we need more than us, women living in Lebanon.
Thank you for your time,
Best,
Kherrberr Team
@Elise,
I suppose as a strong woman, you should not have felt offended
Anyway, we addressed you and Jonathan at once because you repeated the same idea.
Here you go:
@Elise: This discourse of “if you are strong enough you will not get offended” is so typical and childish to be honest. I would say back,”you, if you were not really touched by our comments, you would not have replied with such aggressive comments”, but this won’t lead anywhere. There is a reality in Lebanon called:Ads and songs ARE offensive to women, many people agree with us, they even protested with us against sexist ads and songs back in 2009. Being offended has nothing to do with weakness, rather than it has to do with the reality of having to see sexist ads wherever we go, for the past 100 years! If other people, including you, disagree with us, or do not see anything wrong with these ads, then it’s either their opinion and we respect it, or that they are SO used to this sexist system, that they stopped seeing how wrong it is.
@Jonathan: This discourse of “if you are strong enough you will not get offended” is so typical and childish to be honest. I would say back,”you, if you were not really touched by our comments, you would not have replied with such aggressive comments”, but this won’t lead anywhere. There is a reality in Lebanon called:Ads and songs ARE offensive to women, many people agree with us, they even protested with us against sexist ads and songs back in 2009. Being offended has nothing to do with weakness, rather than it has to do with the reality of having to see sexist ads wherever we go, for the past 100 years! If other people, including you, disagree with us, or do not see anything wrong with these ads, then it’s either their opinion and we respect it, or that they are SO used to this sexist system, that they stopped seeing how wrong it is.
Thank you
Kherrberr Team
@Jonathan,
Firstly, we need to agree with you on what you said about backward laws and religious effect. However, legal philosophy reflects the society. Our society would not have accepted such laws if it had different views on women. We are now fighting for protection from violence law, and we are facing aggressive resistance from society, even from some women. This indicates the need for a social change.
Secondly, we are TOTALLY for a secular state, we do fight for it, and we march in all Laique prides and protests.
About you being at total ease with your looks, it is great to know that some people are not affected by such ads, but this is you. You are a man, it is different than being a woman. You are not raised to care all the time about your looks, ad make up, you are not punished every day by society if you are not fit. You are not punished if you come back home at 1:00 am, or if you have sex. Female bodies are treated differently, and thus, women react differently to such ads. Women get harassed at home to lose weight, at university, work place, streets. “shou ya ba’ra!” that’s a sentence, my friend who is overweight, is very familiar with. Have you ever heard such comment while walking the street? We really want women, and men, to come to a place where they become like you, worried about their health, at ease with their bodies, rather than being obsessed with being slim and “beautiful” according to what society decides is beautiful.
Lebanon as I have stated before, witnesses the highest rate of plastic surgeries around the world! Can you imagine? We even have a LOAN for plastic surgery! If anything, this indicates how obsessed our society is about female looks, and many women are falling into this trap. This is why we want to monitor all ads that create this dilemma between us and our bodies, that portray beauty as “blonde, blue eyed, enlarged lips/boobs, slim figure”.
We do not think looks matter, but these ads do. And believe it or not, people ARE affected, wether we like it or not. I can hear the comments of my mom, and some of my friends when such ads with such “perfect bodies” appear. They start mourning over their “overweight ugly bodies”, while in fact my mom weighs 71 kilos.
We are not “reminding” them that these ads are offensive, neither we are “reviving” it. We WISH these ads did not exist. Unfortunately they do. We drive to our universities and we see them everyday, we listen to them on radio, we see them on TVs and on websites. They haunt us everywhere. It is not that we are “reminding” women of sexist ads that occurred in 1920. They are happening now. And women are really affected by them, even if subconsciously, and you can take a look at some of the examples I gave up there, from the obsession with the “diet” and plastic surgeries, to complicated relations with their bodies.
Thank you for this interesting debate.
best,
Kherrberr Team
I completely agree with you, Kherrberr.
As a feminist woman who faces daily harassment (and this is in the oh-so-modernised UK), and also as a media student, I understand the effects of sexist media on both men and women.
The media, more or less, sells women as sexual objects. We apparently have to look perfect. There is nothing advertised or encouraged about women being intelligent or strong, unless it is in relation to sex appeal. This, unfortunately, is what leads to the abysmal treatment of women that still exists today, even if it is ‘a little better’ than what it was a century ago.
Why is it alright for men to get fat and grow old, but for a woman it labels her as a ‘used good’ which pressures her into surgery? Food for thought.
I, for one, would very much like to see the day when I can leave my house without men staring at my breasts and talking to me as if I’m some object on display for them -commenting on my appearance as if it’s any of their business.
I’m a human being; I would like to be treated as such. A change in the media would contribute drastically to that.
And as a woman, who has experienced domestic violence, I can honestly say that a change in the media’s portrayal of women would also contribute to a better domestic treatment of women as well.
Unfortunately, the majority of men and women have been convinced to just accept this form of media, but I am an active feminist (as are many of my both male and female friends) who believe that we need to make a difference to this misogynistic world.
I’m so sorry that you got such negative responses to this. I’m right behind you and agree that the media and the images of women in it – that are so trivialised by some of the comments here – is one of the ways that all women are slowly, drip, drip, drip made to feel bad about themselves, the way they look and their sexuality.
@Kherrberr
being from a different part of the word, i still realise that most, if not all of these adverts are offensive to women in some or the other way. either their dignity is put into question or their sense of independance. some graphic designers, shamefully women themselves, assume that sewually objectifying a women will sell their product. it is not the display of a woman that is in question, it is the demeaning and wrong display of a woman that should be taken care of, especially if a woman is creating it. some sensitiveness is required towards the fellow members of the fairer sex.