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Summary Of Bloomingdale's Advertisement

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In November of 2015 the popular high-end retail store, Bloomingdale’s, sent out a holiday catalog featuring an advertisement for Rebecca Minkoff purses. The advertisement features a woman holding a purse and laughing in the distance, while there is a man staring at her harshly. The caption of the advertisement was, “spike your best friend’s eggnog while they’re not looking”. The advertisement received immediate backlash, and was pulled from the catalog. As discussed in the TARES test, the advertiser has a social responsibility for the common good, as well as a respect for the persuader. I believe that this advertisement does neither of these things, as it is promoting rape culture, which is already a huge problem in our country as it is. …show more content…

Bloomingdale’s is using sexual assault to try and sell high-end purses. The advertisement is sending the message that it is completely okay to have sex with a person who is not able to give their consent. If all advertisements looked like the Rebecca Minkoff ad, rape culture would be normalized and go unpunished. Men and women would feel like it is completely normal to take advantage of others while they are under the influence, and even getting them drunk and drugging them in order to get what they want. In today’s society, we already have a pretty relaxed view on rape culture. If advertisements like this were normalized, people would look at them and think it is a completely normal thing to do in order to get a woman to have sex with them. There are many changes that could be made in order to make the advertisement ethical. The most obvious would be to take out the line about ‘slipping something’ into another person’s drink. I think it would also be good to make the man’s face a little less harsh, or even take the man out altogether. In the advertisement, the male model does not really serve a purpose other than the line about the eggnog, as he is not even holding merchandise. The only way that I could see the reason for the advertisement is to stimulate a desire for the product, as much as the man desires the women in the advertisement. The way they went about it was extremely insensitive, and could have definitely been done in better

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