A new HIV/AIDS awareness ad just dropped and it’s got everyone’s panties in a hyped-up frenzy. Short story: the ad features a girl reclining in her underwear, legs akimbo, with the Facebook “check-in” emblem positioned over her hoo-ha. The ad reads: “Matti Vertanen and 19 others have been here.” Annnnd everyone is generally losing their shit about it, calling it cheap, offensive slut-shaming.

I think we need to collectively have a conversation about what exactly “slut-shaming” is, and what is just “still not knowing how to digest a woman being honest and proud about her sexuality.” Because one of those claims to be in the name of sexual progress and acceptance, and one exposes how far from that we still are.

So everyone inject a sedative into your jerky knees, and let’s think about this ad. The model is barely dressed, being looked at from above, legs spread, and yet she’s laughing, seems completely comfortable with the position she’s in. This woman gives off a strong sense of being in control of her situation, despite the fact that the angle of both the camera and her knees would suggest that she could be vulnerable, exposed, even exploited. But she’s not. She’s just having a good old time, feeling fine, being open and honest about the fact that she’s been with 20 other people in the past. Given the context that the text imposes, this woman’s attitude couldn’t really be any more positive, liberated and empowered. So far, I’m not yet understanding where the “shame” comes from. Let’s press on.

The ad itself isn’t implying that lying naked on a bed makes you a bad, bad, dirty, whore-ible slut. Nor is it implying that doing sex on 20 folks is something to be ashamed of. If the ad campaign was based around a bunch of guys talking about their sexual experience with the same girl, then yeah, that has the potential to hold a shitty, unfair position of women and sex. The difference between something like that and what’s happening in this ad is that the woman is owning this information about herself and her past. She owns it. She offers it up for the safety of herself and what we assume is a faceless new partner behind the camera. It’s her information, her choice, her power, and her smile as she offers it up like the unashamed modern sexual beast she is. Cue the f-cking applause.

The choice of using an Internet “check-in” to denote her number of partners past is a benign way of communicating the facts without judgment. The ad isn’t analyzing the woman based on that number, in fact, it’s not offering any additional information. It’s only a neutral conduit for conveying information that happens to draw on another currently relevant cultural staple, Facebook. In other words, they’re just being cute so relax.

It’s unfair to assume that ad is suggesting that a public listing of your bedpost roster is necessary for safe sexual health. All it seems to imply is that you should, quite simply, be real about modern sex lives: you’re probably not Christopher Columbus landing upon virgin banks, ya know? I see zero indication that this is a fact worthy of judgment, nor do I see some bogus implication that number of sex partners = increased HIV risk. All they are saying is don’t be a doofus; You never know because you have no control over someone else or where they’ve been, or whom they’ve been with. So wrap your junk up, get tested, fall in love, be happy, or don’t fall in love, and then go be safe with someone else, and have fun, live your life, don’t get AIDS, etc.

All considered, we should have a much bigger problem with people’s super-fired-up response to ads like this. We claim we want honest campaigns that promote education, sexual health and the candid addressing of relevant social issues, but the minute one of these attempts a blunt approach (which, in our over-stimulated information age, seems the only effective way to reach people), our delicate sensibilities tell us to be offended. We’re way too quick to cry slut-shaming, racism, sexism, fattism, etc., in advertising, even when there are clearly the best of intentions at play. We need to calm down and be as careful in our attacks as we ask them to be in theirs. These hurtful forms of judgment do exist and they do plenty of damage to people. Women (and men, to be fair) get hated on for their sexual behavior — especially if they are open about it. And the more honestly and brazenly they address it, the more harshly they are criticized. By now, we all know that’s wrong, right? Well, by those same standards of being evolved enough to be comfortable with #realtalk, let’s not punish a public health ad for communicating its message with the same clarity and gusto that we encourage in each other personally.

HIV is scary. It exists. Fortunately, so do sexy, fantastic, well-lit, in-control women in eerily well-fitting lingerie having sex with multiple partners and while both of you are celebrating that fact with orgasms, just be safe. That’s all this ad is saying. Save your “rage against slut-shaming” energy for those who truly deserve it (because trust, there are plenty of those who do), and spare the good-willed folks who are just trying to protect your naughty bits from a sad, sad, VD-ridden doom.

About the mostly-naked girl on the poster: Jesus Christ. Let’s not freak out. The immediate line-drawing between “nudity” and “exploitation” or “indecency” is only demonstrative of the hang-ups of the viewer, not the advertisers. The art director didn’t invent a negative connotation for this ad, your brain did. Take responsibility for that, if you’re upset about what you’re seeing. The attitude of this girl, and this photo, is so clearly light-hearted and empowered that it’s ridiculous to imagine that it’s offensive to women. She’s chillin’ in her underwear, 20 dudes have been inside her, and she’s like “WTF-ever, NBD, I’m awesome.” Where exactly is the slut shame here? So everyone lighten up. You’re the ones making this dirty. If that girl doesn’t mind her T&A (or T&V, I guess) being out there, neither should you. That’s respecting a woman’s sexuality, kiddos.

PS — If you want to be upset about anything with this ad, let it be the notion that some douche actually has checked-in on Facebook from some girl’s vagina because he thought it would be “funny”. Be upset because you just know some idiot did that at some point.

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My spam box seems to be earnestly concerned with my future, my happiness, my professional success, my financial stability, my penis size and if I need any Generic XANAX, VALIUM, AMBIEN, ATIVAN, ADIPEX! No prescription required to chill out after work. At a time in my life when the first few of those, even maybe sometimes the last, seem complicated, overwhelming, and all-too-upon-me, the offers spam makes excite me. Reading the awkwardly constructed, horrifically designed reassurances of a spam message gets me to stop for a second before I click the ‘Delete All’ button.

Like the meat product from which it gets the name, spam is a special sort of deception. The promise sounds great: it’s easy, it knows us inside and out, all we could ever possibly desire is right there within the particulars of its offer. Spam knows how complicated my life is most of the time and has made it simple for me. Spam must know how much I toss and turn at night, lurching awake with micro-panic attacks, because not only will it help me get a better night’s sleep, but start living! Spam has culled an overwhelming marketplace to find me simply the best in patio furniture, electronics, vitamins, and eye surgery. There’s a better world out there somewhere, one where I am skinny, a US citizen, with perfect young skin, surrounded by flirty friends and my loved ones and family. I can finally enjoy the life I have always dreamed of!

There’s a kind of just-around-the-corner tenuousness spam preaches. Everything is all right there, if only you reach for it. And it is oh-so-simple. All a spam message asks of me is to just:

and commit to one more of the slight movements of one finger, a routine action I perform so much every day I don’t even think about it. If the swirling print etched into the tip of my finger would make the leap, believe, and push out the minutest amount of pressure on the shiny silver rectangle beneath it, I could be happy. Maybe forever.

Sometimes there are supposed people behind the bizarre language of a spam message. Floyd Hanigan wishes me good luck. Oscar Whaley hopes his advice will be useful. Miss Helez Quenzie wants me to know that it is God Almighty that connects people and makes out of them whatsoever he desires. I want so badly to believe in people. Who are these characters that seek out my inbox? Grand narratives build in my head. We all need help sometimes.

But one must step back, intake information critically, and read the nutritional label. You’ll realize what seems like such a promising commitment is really a veiled mash-up of refuse, of half-truths, of things probably not so good for you after all. If I do trust you, spam, you’ll probably destroy my hard drive, rob me blind, break my heart and not do anything noticeable about my penis.

Spam reminds me: joint venture partnerships that will bring me a better life happen outside of the four walls of the screen. It takes a lot more effort than clicking to connect. Promises that really matter can never be deleted.

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On my first night, after freshman orientation, I’d start a cassette-only record label with the American Apparel model down the hall. We’d release dubstep remixes of witch house songs and make out in front of popular party photographers. We’d break up after she cheats on me with Ezra Koenig, and then I’d write a 20,000 word blog post calling Vampire Weekend our generation’s Boston.

This post would capture the attention of editors citywide, six of whom would hire me (at a rate of $1,000 an hour) as a party reporter. Then I’d attend parties, mostly; an ex-girlfriend might see a picture of me telling Jesse Eisenberg a very funny joke on Gawker, and rue the day she ended things with me, cool city guy.

I’d smoke cigarettes like I do now, but at NYU this would be, for some reason, fascinating; “how absolutely wonderful you smell,” Karen O would say, climbing out of my Bushwick love palace/D.I.Y. space some Sunday morning. (Beach Fossils, playing the night before, would tell me they’re naming their album after me, and that every chilled-out note of it would be a tribute to my largess and ineffable hipness.)

I would finally accept one of the hundreds of personalized, gold-embossed art gallery party invitations I’d received, and immediately upon stepping into the gallery would 1) become the perfect sort of drunk where you’re calm and buzzed and not vomiting either your heart or dinner out, 2) befriend James Franco (“I loved Howl,” I would say, by way of introduction) and 3) have my picture taken by Terry Richardson, under the (mistaken) assumption that I am a drugged, naked twenty-one-year-old. Franco and I would snort prescription pills off the Brooklyn Bridge and talk about being young and attractive and famous.

Then he’d jump.

I’d write about the experience for the Village Voice, recount it, teary-eyed, on the Today show, and routinely use it as a pick-up line. (“You know, I’m the guy who was standing next to James Franco when he killed himself,” I’d say. “Here is a business card with my home address, Tumblr handle, and preferred underwear style,” they’d say, handing me a business card and running out the door to get things ready for me.) Eventually I’d probably go to class, and pass on the strength of my charm alone, and then maybe I’d go into advertising, or academia.

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According to a report in The Australian, $45 million is going to be raised for product and brand placement in the latest installment of the James Bond series. This figure will mean the new film, yet untitled other than by its codename “Bond23,” will command the highest price for product placement in cinema history. Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report comes in at number 2; that film received about $20 million from Lexus, Bulgari and American Express to feature their products and brands.

None of this is particularly novel, and mainstream cinema has featured strategically placed products and brands for a while now. But the $45 million is causing fans to worry that product placement concerns will harm the quality of the movie. This point is articulated in Morgan Spurlock’s (director of Super Size Me) new documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.

Product placement undoubtedly has the potential to detract from the quality of a film, but that it’s reached these levels comes as no surprise. Mainstream cinema by it’s very nature creates and reinforces an image of our lives and our relationships with each other. With few exceptions, it has always depicted us as being capitalist consumers, and even a Hollywood flick made 60 years ago implicitly sells a product – the difference is that in 1951 that product was a lifestyle or a way of life that Hollywood purported to be normative, and this lifestyle naturally included being a consumer. In 2011, the only real difference is that now, with the increasing omnipresence of advertising, we’re shown specifically what to consume.

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I have been confused by the Sofia Vergara Diet Pepsi commercial since it first aired—not merely because it’s been forever since a celebrity endorsed Pepsi, right? (One remembers the Britney Spears commercials from the early 2000s, but since then, it’s been a long slog.) Or is Sofia Vergara even a celebrity?

The commercial presumes she is. Therein, a Tweet from the ABC sitcom star reading “At the pier… just saw #DavidBeckham!” clears an entire beach of girls searching for the British soccer star David Beckham, freeing Ms. Vergara to go buy a Diet Pepsi, unencumbered by David Beckham fans who happen to read her Twitter feed and/or subscribe to the hashtag “#DavidBeckham.” Which is everyone. Or no one!

Twitter is a medium that thrives on specificity—of nomenclature as well as location. The viewer is willing to accept that David Beckham has given his life away to being a hashtag (though a cursory Twitter search reveals that much of the “#DavidBeckham” activity refers back to this stupid Diet Pepsi commercial, in something of a self-fulfilling prophesy), but only the dopiest viewer would take as a given that a Twitter user can simply announce her presence by starting “At the pier.” What pier? Where? Celebrity or not, Sofia Vergara is nowhere near famous enough to have well-known pier preferences.

Thus, every girl in the commercial who runs off the beach at Sofia Vergara’s online announcement that she’s seen #DavidBeckham “at the pier” must be:

• (a) A celebrity stalked who followed Sofia Vergara to the pier, and following her on Twitter, thus realizing that Ms. Vergara went to the pier in question and saw a more famous celebrity there.
• (b) A random interloper who saw Sofia Vergara at the pier, noted that she was on Twitter, realized that Ms. Vergara had seen Mr. Beckham, and ran along with the crowd. (A question posed by (a) and (b), which presume the savviest audiences: where are these women running to? If the beach and pier were separate, presumably Diet Pepsi’s audience would see its dumb, laughable marks running towards some industrial edifice while Sofia Vergara sunbathed, but this is not the case. The women, alerted of David Beckham’s presence, merely run in a direction.)
• (c) Women who follow the #DavidBeckham hashtag and figure that any beach must play host to the “pier” at which David Beckham is located.
• (d) [Finally, most significantly] Women who read Twitter while on beach vacations.

That Sofia Vergara—for a moment—meets David Beckham is of little to no consequence. In this woman’s real (non-commercial) life, she has surely met stars of even greater wattage. This commercial, though, begs us to believe that Ms. Vergara is as stymied by celebrity as the rest of us dumb schmoes, while also asking us to swallow the notion that a C-list (maybe? the lists are so confusing!) star could stir up a beachwide rebellion. Either she’s a major, beach-riot-worthy megastar, or she’s embarrassed by attention, Pepsi—there’s no splitting the difference. All this despite the fact that the real Sofia Vergara has an un-commercially-describable humble/braggy Twitter that splits the difference between fan engagement and self-indulgence better than an ad exec’s notion ever could.

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In this advertisement for what appears to be a pretty incredible house in Queensland, Australian real estate company Neo Property employs a pretty, um, strange sales tactic. Even after watching it a couple of times, all I can seem to figure out is that there’s a sweaty lingerie model tied to a chair, a couple of ladies about to get it on, and the eventual arrival of a SWAT team? The model tells the emergency dispatcher she’s “in another Neo video.” Is this a home invasion scenario or did the creepy real estate brokers kidnap her themselves? I have no idea.

Perhaps someone in an advertising agency somewhere thought they were “thinking outside the box” when they pitched this, but it’s all kinds of ridiculous. And, aside from the obvious reasons why this is a terrible ad, why would anyone presume it to be effective? Are they trying to sell property to adults or to a nation of high school boys sitting at home watching porn? My guess is that anyone who could afford such a ballin’ house probably doesn’t make real estate decisions based on some gratuitous semi-nudity.

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It is almost a given that the modern-day female is unhappy with her body. Perhaps it is her thighs or her belly, her nose or her build. Whatever the imperfection, she is likely to devote a great deal of energy to worrying over the problem area and making efforts to change it throughout her lifetime.

A new book by Michelle Lelwica, Th. D. (Theology Doctorate), offers new insight into women’s body blues.  Lelwica’s research has shown her that the female’s goal of a perfect physique is dogmatic in nature and that the prospect of being thin and beautiful is equivalent to a degree of salvation and spiritual fulfillment. In The Religion of Thinness, Lelwica traces our values of thinness and beauty all the way back to the first lady, Eve.

Lelwica was featured on MentorConnect, an online eating disorder mentoring community, in a teleconference this past December. Shannon Cutts, the founder of MentorConnect, interviewed Lelwica about her book and both shared their insights into eating disorder recovery. Cutts first asked Lelwica if she felt that images in the media were responsible for Lelwica’s bulimia earlier in life. Lelwica said no – the root of her eating disorder was an inability to cope with feelings of pain and suffering, yet images in the media did serve as a powerful trigger.

“I used to read Seventeen magazine like a bible,” Lelwica said. “And I had no critical consciousness; I had no real ability to look at what the messages were. And I made no connection whatsoever between the kind of profound self-loathing I had for my body and the images that I was studying all the time.”

 Lelwica asserts that the way women and men are portrayed in print and on the screen goes beyond entertainment and that there is an underlying message in their bodies and the roles they play. She said that the images speak to us on an existential level; they offer “an answer before the question.”



”So many of us know that of course [the images] are computerized,” she said. “Many of the women in magazines aren’t even real anymore…We can kind of know that intellectually, even really strongly intellectually, but those images still get under our skin…They’re speaking to a different part of us, they’re not speaking to our intellect. They’re speaking to the part of us that really is looking for something, the part of us that wants to feel like there’s some point to it all, that we have something to strive after or that we have a meaning or a purpose.

“They tell us, ‘This is what it looks like, this is what you could be,’ before we’ve even been allowed to explore whatever unpleasant feelings or whatever emptiness or anxiety or stress or edginess or depression, whatever it is that’s going on inside of us,” Lelwica continued. “We don’t have to deal with it if we could just look at those pictures. They kind of tell you right away before you even have to ask the question. So in that sense, they kind of preempt the spiritual journey we need to have to transform that pain.”



In a follow-up email interview, I asked Lelwica what she felt these images are specifically saying. 

”I think one of the most repetitive and ubiquitous messages women receive from mainstream/popular media images of women is that their happiness depends on being thin, and that thinness is also the ticket to success in other areas, such as romance, beauty, career, health,” she said. “If I had to give a ‘conversation bubble’ to any given model in an advertisement, I would have her saying something like: ‘Look how pretty, I mean slim, I mean healthy, I mean thin, I mean happy, I mean slender I am. Surely if you buy this product you will be pretty-happy-healthy-thin too. And surely being happy, healthy, and pretty are impossible without being skinny!’”

Lelwica and Cutts touched on the fact that the desire to change our bodies fuels a number of industries – cosmetics, weight loss, clothing, cosmetic surgery, etc. As a part of their “Love Your Body” Campaign, the National Organization for Women created “The ABCs and Ds of Commercial Images of Women”, a slide presentation that shows how advertisements and the media showcase and “enforce” unrealistic beauty standards. The presentation goes quite deep in the dissection of advertisements and illustrates how these images fuel both commerce and low self-esteem.

It was during her graduate studies at Harvard Divinity School that Lelwica began to uncover the deep root of bodily shame as she researched the works of early theologians, specifically within historical Christianity. 

”The theme kept on coming up again and again of women’s bodies being shameful,” she said to Cutts. “They’re the sign of women’s inferiority, their weakness, their intellectual capabilities.” Lelwica spoke about how early church fathers often blamed Eve for bringing sin into the world, for leading men into temptation, and causing the downfall of humankind. Lelwica found a powerful symbolism in the story of Eve: “She eats,” Lelwica said, “and it is her eating that brings evil into the world…There’s a suggestion that women fail to control their bodies – Eve failed to control her appetite – that is not the author’s intention, but the symbolism is still very relevant for women today.” Lelwica described this discovery as an “A-ha!” moment in understanding her own eating disorder. She was able to see her self-loathing as part of a cultural and historical phenomenon and as a tradition passed down from generation to generation.

“It’s not about individual women,” she said. “We are carrying in our bodies this whole legacy that is much bigger than us. And we need to wake up and do what we can in our own ways, find our own ways to develop a kind of resistance and a way of transforming that whole narrative of women’s uncontrollable, unruly, sinful bodies and find ways to feel empowered in our bodies.”

I asked Lelwica what she would say to people who might disregard her theories on the deep implications of images in the media and the value of thinness in our society. She said that the largest indication that these ideals are damaging is the fact that the vast majority of women think there is something wrong with their bodies. “We are culturally conditioned to want a ‘better’ (read: thinner) body and to assume that the bodies we are born with are not okay,” she said. “The media is not the only factor persuading us that our bodies need to be fixed, but it is certainly one of the most widespread and thus powerful influences on our thinking and our relationships to our bodies.”



“I start from the assumption that we are not born wishing we were thinner,” said Lelwica, “rather, this desire is learned.” 

For more information on The Religion of Thinness and Michelle Lelwica, visit the website for Religion of Thinness.

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According to its website, Brain Farm Digital Cinema “has gathered an arsenal of the most advanced and progressive filmmaking technology to bring the masses a snowboarding adventure of epic proportions” for its latest film, titled “The Art of Flight.” Hyperbole (and rampant product placement) aside — Red Bull! Quicksilver! — the teaser for Brain Farm’s latest film features a stunning array of visuals from snow-covered locations all over the world: Wyoming, Patagonia, Austria, etc. Watch this and be inspired (while you bask in the artificial glow of your computer screen).

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As part of some weird advertising campaign to promote the 50th anniversary of Ken dolls, Mattel has been putting on a full blitz, including subway posters, web site banners, and, on Monday, photo-opportunities with Ken (well, good-looking, nearly-plastic men in suits and baby blue ties with Ken tags on their wrists). The photo stream from Times Square, as well as photos from L.A. and elsewhere, are all publicly visible on Barbie’s Facebook page. You don’t even have to friend her! That girl needs to learn about privacy settings.

Here are the best of the best. If you were asking yourself, “What kind of people are strolling through Times Square between 9am and noon on a Monday in the winter, posing for photos with men dressed up as Ken dolls”, look no further for your answer.

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Stay Offline

The most important part of never going viral is staying off the Internet. This might sound OK now, but imagine 2011.

Don’t Name Anything or Use Meta Tags

The Internet relies on a series of math equations that factor in language when deciding where to send users. If there is no language connecting you to the sweet viral shit someone is searching for, there is no way for anyone to find you and make you viral.

Avoid Anything with the Phrases “iPhone 5” or “Mac OS 11”

Something that will keep you from going viral is staying away from things people really want. There are a wide variety of things you can do to avoid extremely viralwords and ideas. You could move to a bleak, authentic ‘off the grid’ home and live off carefully harvested organic onions. Or, you could simply never type the words “Dakota Fanning will be creative director for the new self-driving Google car. Cupcake kittens.”

Employ the Use of Vapid Trends

On the other hand, people who spend time on the Internet looking for things to click on are very tired of many things. They are looking for something new. If you show them old images and ideas, they will probably leave you alone and never click on you again. Like your parents and your friends from high school, you will remain obscure by being out-of-date thematically.

A List of Things that Can Probably No Longer Go Viral

• Pizza
• Babies
• Cats
• Synthesizers
• Bongs
• Print ads involving a visual metaphor
• Erotic NSFW images of any kind
• Unimaginative references to celebrities

Plan Carefully

If you plan something really well and it becomes widely known, that’s called ‘making something well,’ not ‘going viral.’ Viral must have the aura of shitty. Example: ad agencies that employ the ‘viral look’ AKA grainy camera phone shot of an impossible physical feat. Working hard and producing a popular cultural product is the opposite of going viral.

Tell Your Friends

Your close friends will have no interest in your brilliant idea or video. Thank Christ. They see you as a person and not as the creator of ingenious online dementia. If you let them know about your wonderful new shit – via Facebook, for example – they will probably look at it passively and wonder why you are becoming such an asshole. Your hits will decrease dramatically.

Really Want It

Caring means you tried too hard. You will probably not go viral. The thing you made will lack spontaneity. The movements will be too rigid, the colors too justified, the language too considered.

Work in Advertising

I work in Advertising and let me tell you: the only thing we want is to “go viral.” It almost never happens. At least I am getting paid to try.

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