"Real men Don't buy girls" - but then, who does?

by: Dabitch, Apr 13 2011 - 1:12pm

Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore have started an initiative to curb sex trafficking. They launched the youtube channel Real men don't buy girls on Monday, and on the DNA foundation facebook page you can join in by adding your face to one of the films. Adfreak reckons the celebs are there simply to attract eyeballs, and Ososcio dubs it "cause-branded entertainment" which sums the quirky clips up quite nicely. This is no harrowing Emma Thompson as a sex slave campaign, instead the DNA work relies on tried and true viral steroids: celebrities, quirkyness, your-face-here engagement, and of course a good cause that nobody sane would disagree with.

At the Clinton Global Initiative Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher launched the Real Men campaign to end child sex slavery. The effort is a partnership between their DNA Foundation, Peter and Jennifer Buffett's Novo Foundation and a coalition of leading technology companies, among them, Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Palantir and Square. The unique angle to this full-throttle offensive aims to root out the cause: the demand for child sex slaves.

Here you can view when Kutcher opens the press conference saying:

"Yesterday was the 148th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation, but I I don't think a lot of people know that. I don't think a lot of people celebrated that."
There are 27 million slaves in the world today more than ever before in human history. "One could make an assumption that it's a global problem. The CIA estimates that there are a million slaves in the US today. I think if Abe knew that, he'd be quite upset."

If it changes attitudes among those who need theirs adjusted remains to be seen, but it does have all the ingredients to spread virally. It might seem a little odd that the Adrian Peterson "fire" skit is "featuring Tom Brady", but the idea here is that eventually everyone else will be the "featured" people at the end of the celeb-clip via the facebook-app that allows you to upload yourself into the campaign. I was trying to find the red thread in the stories, if they're doing "unmanly" things such as laundry and ironing in a "manly" way perhaps. Or disproving man-myths such as the one that men have no sense of direction and will never stop to ask for any either. But the oddness in shaving with chainsaws and distrusting of robots shows there's not a gender-based concept going on, the red thread here is simply that these men are more successful than most men, as they're celebrities.

Real men do their own laundry with Asthon Kutcher