I just finished watching a much talked about Birell ad and I'm completely disgusted. Never have 28 seconds so fully summarized the entire problem with Egyptian men in Egypt as did this advertisement. The advertisement shows a beautiful girl saying hello to one of four guys, the remaining three look back at him with disgust when he says she has a great personality. The advertisement tells us that the girl's personality is the last thing you can comment on if you're a man.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not that touchy about humorous sexist remarks, I can laugh at them as much as the next male chauvinist pig (I found the one about Tamer Hosny singing at the wedding funny for example). The problem with the advertisement isn't only that it was extremely sexist, stupid and not even funny; the real problem is that the situation was too real for comfort, reflecting an existing attitude with the result that any hint of sarcasm or humor was simply unreachable. In effect the advertisement is just a documentation of real life situations that I myself as a man experience, and much like those real experiences this advertisement nearly caused me to puke.
There is as much humor or wit in the ad as there is alcohol in Birell, which is needless to say ZERO. It's sad how Birell is trying to imitate the alcoholic beer ads abroad but just as the product is lacking in the most lively component, the advertisement lack in intelligence all of its bitter taste none of its wit. The result is a despicable mindless advertisement that can only be found to be amusing by idiots.
I feel insulted as a man because this advertisement tells me that I have to be a complete bonehead if I am to be a man and to only think of a body when thinking of a woman; to treat a woman as a person is not manly apparently. Well I'd rather not be a man if that's what a man is expected to be.
But seriously though, who are they kidding? Could anything be more pathetic than a bunch of kids trying to be men by drinking non alcoholic beer? Ever thought of a real beer advertiser looking at this ad? I'd bet he'd be thinking, be a man, drink REAL beer. I could do the same and call them a bunch of sissies, but rather than revert to their juvenile ways I would rather point out their hypocrisy since drinking beer isn't the macho standard.
The reason why Birell exists should have been to enjoy the taste of beer without necessarily getting drunk after drinking a few. Either that, or come as close as possible to being a real man (drinking beer) without invoking Islamic guilt. Now, if morality is so important, what kind of message are they spreading by encouraging young kids to be mindless and think of women as sex objects? So it's okay to think of sex with a woman but not to drink alcohol? What a skewed sense of morality, and indeed this is exactly what's wrong with our society. Morals are skewed in young minds that have been shut down in the face of dogma.
People choose a moronic attitude towards anything where ever a norm has already been established. They choose not to think when it comes to women, they choose not to think when it comes to religion and slowly this attitude of stupidity is seeping into aspects of every day life. The end result will cause the Birell ad to be almost prophetic, young mindless kids pretending to be men and eventually running the country.
There is already a mounting pressure in society for conformity; the pressure of being a man through the eyes of society is evident through this ad. Many of the men I met are just that way, extending their moronic and dogmatic views to women's sexual appetite, virginity, language and so on.
Double standards are certainly the easiest key to identifying an inactive mind. The same people who put pressure on men to act like 'men' and ignore a girl's personality claim to value their mothers greatly. It seems that even the concept of a mother is objectified in a society too mindless to realize that mothers are female and were once girls whose personalities were demanded to be ignored.
I'm not sure if I can demand an apology from Birell for insulting men and women that way, because in a sense their defense can be that this is reality. I think it's wrong for media to promote these ideas not on the grounds of any censorship but based on the common sense that when things are illogical and insulting, they just shouldn't be allowed on television.
3 comments:
it is disgusting! I would say so much but you already said it all. There's something I thought about though. The good personality thing is very relative and I thought even the way people say someone has a good personality or not is based on very different criteria. And the criteria that egyptians sometimes put are sometimes as annoying as the whole concept of the ad
I agree with silent observer on his note.
Yet, Egyptian or not, both genders - usually - have great misconceptions about each other...and it is disgusting for an ad that had to pass under the noses of "educated" and cultured people whom their jobs is to find what is or isn't proper to be introduced to the society through a very effective media channel to be promoted this way.
We don't need more stressing on the woman's lack of substance or value except as a sex toy in the minds of some poor informed and inexperienced men, just like we don't need more stressing on the man's lack of value to see beyond the body in the mind of disadvantaged women...both genders were abused in the ad...just as reality.
So, regardless of which scale we use to define a good personality...basics of human respect should be granted.
I agree with you Silent Observer, good personality is yet another issue and marriages have become like transactions and so on, but even with a misconception about a good personality, they say that it doesn't matter, and that means a bad personality doesn't matter either..
But yeah, Egyptians have become very annoying in their ideas and concepts.
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