How.... I'm not sure if I want to use the word "daring" here, to have a transgender speak about being a woman, and equal pay. Bold, perhaps. Erika Irvin, who goes by the stage name Amazon Eve shares thoughts about being a woman - we have "more choices in clothes" (oh joy!) and can apparently say no to sex by stating we have a headache.
Really, now?
This sounds more like we're ticking off clichés than actually discussing womanhood, but I digress. Set to classical music and lingering black and white beauty-shots, all filmed in LA with award-winning director Koen Mortier, this is sure to get some attention due to its controversial nature. It is the not the first time that mortierbrigade has tackled this controversial issue head-on, having created many campaigning films in the past. These include the film it created with porn star Sasha Grey in 2012, explaining how the adult film industry is one of the only places in the world where women earn more than their male counterparts.
Charlotte Coddens, spokesperson, mortierbrigade, comments: “At mortierbrigade we pride ourselves on viewing the world differently and that is why the team felt compelled to offer our voices in support of the equal pay issue, telling the story from an angle that had never been explored before. Transgender icons such as Caitlyn Jenner, and Erika herself, have put the issues of transgender people on the agenda globally, which is why we felt that Erika’s story was a new way of exploring this inequality from a positive and inspiring angle.”
Vera Claes, secretary general, Equal Pay Day Europe, comments: “Who better to bring to life the problem of unfair pay than Erika - someone who has experienced the issue from both sides of the table. Share your support for women around the world, using #PayMeLikeAMan.”
I would really like to know what you think of this, please do comment here.
Advertiser: Equal Pay Day Europe
Client: Vera Claes, Lodewijk Bleijerveld, Zita Gurmai
Agency: mortierbrigade
Creative direction: Jens Mortier, Joost Berends, Philippe De Ceuster
Strategic Director: Vincent D’Halluin
Business Director: Charlotte Coddens
Producer: Lore Meert
Creative team: Kwint De Meyer, Willem De Wachter, Joost Berends, Koen Mortier
Production company: Czar
Director: Koen Mortier
Producer: Joop Haesen, Eurydice Gysel
Producer LA: Kimi A.E. Porter
Postproducer Bieke De Keersmaecker
DOP: Stoeps Langensteiner
Editor: Martin Leroy
Sound: Senjan Jansen
Grading: Joost Van Kerckhove
Online: Moxy
Music: Lascia ch'io pianga (Air de Almirena) by Ragin Derek Lee, Christophe Rousset, Les Talens Lyriques & Ewa Mallas-Godlewska / Naïve Records
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This is the definition of misogyny - "Men make better Women than Women, Men are better able to comment on Women's issues than Women." Transgenderism empowers misogyny. What garbage.
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PermalinkThis is a joke, right?
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PermalinkThis is deeply unsettling. I see you didn't want to choose the word "daring" to describe, so how about "confused" instead? To have a 37 year old "worlds tallest model" complain about a wage gap is like rubbing our noses in the issue. This is misogyny, plain and simple, as even this man makes a better spokesperson for a women's issue than real women. It's cynical and sensationalistic.
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PermalinkHey @adland, 1st please excuse any grammar errors.. As I quickly type on a pad.
Now to to subject of the day; of course this isn't true:
"Men make better Women than Women, Men are better able to comment on Women's issues than Women." Transgenderism empowers misogyny. What garbage."
In our ever-changing societies, people have the ability, and human right to identify in any manner that comforts their own being. Transgender humans, may identify as men or women. However, that is a personal choice, and often a biological factor that culturally is not discernable.
We often confuse a person's sexuality as a statement, against our self-identity.
For me, as a single hetro-male, with no children.. It does seem society places far too much attention on what others do VS how people can find sustainable manners to openly communicate toward advancement of [our] one global culture called humanity.
Is this form of communication the role of 21st century brand advertising?
Maybe, yes.. If done in an advocate role. Yet, more often than not brands, or people use tools of media and tactical strategy for profiteering of self. But, this is an era of hyper-micro-celebrity. A period of civilization when you can be a star, be a social media influence, gain followers, and profit.
The complexity of individual sexuality is far beyond the purchase of a dress, or pants, but it is without a doubt, extremely personal.
With the understanding this site has a huge worldwide audience, please keep in mind.. Your specific land of origin morality, isn't necessarily worldview.
No more than, what people in America may view as moral, or focused on their particular civil rights. Or, why there was the Arab Spring, OCCUPY Hong Kong. Movements are born to reflect the mass of people unheard, often unseen.
Lastly, LGBT concerns are global, and they are based in human rights. This intersection is difficult to grasp contextually to advertising, PR spin, media placement, clicks & hits.. All of which can create revenue. A sweeping camera movement isn't a reflection of humankind, but a director's artistic expression to articulate a human narrative and story.
So, on international women's day.. Cheers to all women, to all those that helped raise me, and that gave birth to you, far beyond Branding:)
And, thx to @adland for providing a platform that has grown to become the oldest and largest advertising archive in the world! Wow.. That is a big deal,
ws^
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PermalinkWow dude wtf are you on about. It's not the grammar errors you need to worry about, it's the fact you make absolutely zero sense. A 'land of origin morality?' I don't think you've understood a word anyone here is saying.
Firstly, we're not talking about sexuality, here; this is nothing to do with the LGB communities. This is about a person who was raised in the dominant sex class deciding to claim authority on the experiences of those born in the oppressed sex class. This is trivialising and obscuring the oppression faced by women on the basis of their sex.
It would be lovely if we could all move forwards as one and just wish away conflict with drab, saccharine videos, but that approach isn't actually going to lead to a more equal world. The actual world is divided along a lot of axes and we need to be able to talk about those divisions accurately if we're going to be able to move into a beautiful new land of freedom and fields and flow-y scarves. People who are born men but want to dress and present as women face a bunch of different prejudices that are awful and destructive and completely irrational; that is terrible. However, people raised in the sex class experience an oppression which is different, and we need to be able to talk about that. Having people raised male talk as if their oppression is either the same as the oppression of women, or some kind of worse variant on the same theme, stops us being able to do that. It can also end up with things like International Women's Day being used to centre the voices of people who are not women, for example.
Also I enjoy how you've written your comment in a tone which is clearly supposed to be set to the music in that godawful video. 'A sweeping camera movement isn't a reflection of humankind, but a director's artistic expression to articulate a human narrative'. Go back to your creative writing class instead of trying to engage in a debate which affects the actual lives of an oppressed class.
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PermalinkAll human oppression IMHO, is equal.
Regardless if it is gender specific, religious, economic or framed in a racial context. The difference is who is burdened with the cultural oppression.
Your words are an extension of your experience. Why should I echo what others state? That is hive speak, not an open debate, right!?
However, I'm not a woman.
[My oppressions] aren't based on gender. But be warned, and consider before you respond again, you haven't walked in my boots, you haven't a clue what I've experienced in the advertising sector beginning on Madison Ave at the largest agencies. Nor, in life!
Sexism, sexuality.. transgender, are all aspects of gender & biology; that is a fact.
Do I feel there is a direct sensational aspect to this spot being released on international women's day, maybe. But, who am I to oppress someone that feels oppression?
I look far beyond equal pay for women, and for global transgender communities. I seek cultural, legal & economic [equity] for all. But that is my job, way before this spot was created.
Thank you for taking the time to call me out. Yet the topic is about the spot, and the validity of a transgender person speaking about equal pay, contextually to living life as a woman. Should we develop a special pay scale for her? I mean she is identifying as a woman, right?
Haha.. A twisty society indeed, some by choice, some biological :)
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PermalinkI think both this ad, and the one from 2012 with Sasha Grey is too clever by half and ends up insulting women despite of itself, since they're cynically going for the "viral point" of porn stars and transexual models. Also, it's tonedeaf when Amazon Eve talks about "women have more clothes to choose from", claiming women have more choices. Clothes, we can choose clothes. That should have ended up on the cutting room floor.
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PermalinkI'm not sure exactly what the agency intended with this - and I doubt neither did they. Oh and 'Amazon Eve' (seriously, that sounds like her Porn Star name, I can't take that seriously), comes across as superficial and foolish. A bigger choice of clothes, really? Even if that were true - and it isn't - way to patronize the shit out of billions of women. It's like when Caitlyn Jenner made a comment saying 'the hardest part of being a woman is figuring out what to wear'. No, I imagine one of the hardest - yet most amazing - things about being a woman is carrying a baby for 9 months and creating life. Something no trans woman can do, let us not forget.
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PermalinkI know exactly what the agency intended. They intended to capitalize on the movement du jour same as it was Dadvertising a few years ago or clean water a few years before that. I'm more cynical than most but this is just plain pandering to get in the news.
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PermalinkWere they going for the 'subjugation of women in society' and 'concerted effort to undermine women's dignity' feeling here? Because that's the feeling I'm getting here. Seriously, why is it a "positive" to fake illness because you don't want to have sex? You should be able to say "i don't want to have sex" and that is that. How did the people who created this not see how sexist it comes across?
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PermalinkUK Correspondent here with the relevant British TV Trope.
Hold my hat, I'm going in.
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