I’ll be honest, being a full time college student, while
working full time at a hospital, while trying to maintain my sanity is a little
hard sometimes. With that being said, I occasionally end up having a few drinks
on the weekend (not the healthiest stress reliever I know, I know).
My drink of choice, unfortunately is Bud Light. I recently
told myself I was going to boycott them, because they seemed to have lost their
mind over in the advertising department. I was willing to forgive them for all
the sexist things they’ve done in the past, because as they say “forgive and
forget” (or something like that), but their recent mistake of promoting rape culture-seriously,
in 2015? - was a little too much.
I don’t know how or why I was surprised to hear of a beer
company making an offensive advertisement, but I was. What’s even more ironic
is that April is sexual assault awareness month, so when I read the slogan “The
perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night
#UpForWhatever” all I could do was shake my head and face palm.
In case anyone needs a review of what consent is, here we
go:
-Sexual activity requires consent, which is defined as
voluntary, positive agreement between the participants to engage in specific
sexual activity.
-Consent to sexual activity can be communicated in a variety
of ways, but one should presume that consent has not been given in the absence
of clear, positive agreement.
-Consent must be clear and unambiguous for each participant
at every stage of a sexual encounter. The absence of "no" should not
be understood to mean there is consent.
-The use of alcohol or drugs may seriously interfere with
the participants' judgment about whether consent has been sought and given.
The people over at Bud Light may need to read those last two
a couple times.
I personally brought this up when I was with my friends this
weekend and my guy friends didn’t really see a problem with it (they’re
morons), but my girl friends agreed with me when I said I thought it was pretty
rapey. I don’t know if rapey is really a word, but it is in my world. The thing
that I find craziest about this whole ordeal, is the way Bud Light handled it.
They simply removed the one slogan, and are continuing to keep the “Up For
Whatever” campaign. This is not the first time they have promoted “rapey”
material with this campaign. For St. Patrick’s Day they promoted sexual assault
by saying “You can pinch people who aren’t #UpForWhatever.” They deleted the
tweet and apologized, but I don’t understand how this is still happening. Maybe
you should just get rid of the idea all together, Bud Light??
All I know is that I’m going to attempt to boycott Bud Light
until they get their s*!t together. I’ve been making my own wine anyways, maybe
I’ll just stick with drinking that, because I certainly would never advertise
rape-culture.
My slogan would be something along the lines of #UpForDrinkingWineWhileWatchingNetflixAndEatingTooMuchAndVentingWithYourGirlFriends
I am absolutely and completely disgusted.! I am actually surprised such a a big company would take a dumb risk like that. Their advertising manager is probably a rapist ans should be fired. I mean they couldn't have been any more socially irresponsible, sexist, and insensitive. Now that I'm done ranting... This kind of reminds me of the advertising and supersexualize me discussions we had in class. They are forgetting that women are actual people who drink beer and using them as objects as a way to profit. Mixing the message of sex and drinking in advertisement inst new but this a low. They solely geared this one towards men, maybe if they said something like " Drink Bu Light and you wont forget it" with a group of friends or something that can be taken in a number of scenarios, friends having a girls night or even guys having a sports party. Yes it can still geared towards sex by whomever is reading but unfortunately sex sells. And it sells big.
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