Sex Sells: BK Versus CK

So great was the ruckus over a recent Calvin Klein ad that this week the company yanked it from a New York City billboard.

The ad depicted a foursome of sorts – one which had the audacity to involve only one girl.

Whatever, right?

Fast forward to today, when I saw the ad for the new Burger King campaign for which the slogan is, “it’ll blow your mind away.”

That people still eat at Burger King blows my mind away, but again, whatever.

The “it” to which the slogan refers is the company’s new 7-inch oblong sandwich.

I know that not because I measured it, but because those dimensions are the basis for the campaign, and indeed, for the sandwich itself.

From the text of the ad:

Fill your desire for something long, juicy and flame-grilled with the NEW BK SUPER SEVEN INCHER. Yearn for more after you taste the mind-blowing burger that comes with a single beef patty, topped with American cheese, crispy onions and the A1 Thick & Hearty Steak Sauce.

In the ad’s picture, the “BK super seven-incher” is en route to its destination – the gaping mouth of a blow-up doll, or of a model who looks a whole helluva lot like a blow-up doll.

In fact, take a look (click to enlarge) …

Somewhere there’s an oblique mayonnaise metaphor, but even aside from that it’s clear that despite the slogan, it’s not the model’s mind that Burger King wants blown.

It’s subjectively at least as obscene as the Calvin Klein ad.

And yet, betcha bottom dollar menu that the Burger King ad is here to stay. (Not that it’s ever going up on a NYC billboard … savvy New Yorkers know that those who eat BK don’t fit into CK).

So why has the CK campaign been scorned, while the BK ad has been benignly received?

I think it’s because, for all the go-girl empowerment of faux-feminist America, people just can’t stand to see women in sexually dominant situations.

The girl in the Calvin Klein ad is, to be sure, the one and only aggressive element in the picture. She alone controls the who-what-when, even to the point that awaiting her eventual attention is a patient guy on the floor beneath the sofa where she lay.

Compare that with the BK girl, who’s passive and accommodating … poised to give, even as she ostensibly receives.

Both ads are, for the record, fine by me … as are both of the types of sexuality to which the ads allude.

But I can’t let slide the inherent juxtaposition, especially during a week when Americans can’t shut up about the lack of “women’s rights” around the world.

Iran at least is consistent in its disregard for women, as well as open about its expectation of female passivity. U.S. culture, on the other hand, veils its expectation of female passivity in its pretend regard for the rights of women.

Passivity in America is a “right;” everywhere else it’s a “rule.”

Comments