Womens Studies

WS 107

After watching the Super Bowl on Sunday, I did further reflection on the advertisements I had just seen, upon doing some reflection I found some of the advertisements to be a reflection of some of the flaws of our society. One such commercial which fit this idea was the FIAT 500 commercial.

During this commercial it begins with a “nerdy” man walking down the sidewalk with a fresh latte in one hand. As he walks down the street he sees an attractive women bent over, and the man then stops and “checks her out.” Upon him doing this the model realizes what he is up to, and approaches the man in an aggressive manner. She then slaps the man across the face, while beginning to utter a foreign language which turns out to be Italian ). The man shocked at her aggressiveness backs up to a street pole, where the attractive model then grabs the tie and collar in a seductive sensual way, pulling her face closer to the man in a way she is about to kiss him but doesn’t. Then, she takes her finger puts it in his latte in a very sexual way, taking the foam of the top and pulling it towards her mouth. However as she does this some of the foam falls off of her finger and lands on her partially exposed chest. The man then comes closer to her and as he is about to kiss her she turns into a FIAT 500 sports car. The man now in complete shock looks inside the car which just appeared, and we are shown shots of acceleration, rapid turns etc. The commercial ends with the FIAT logo, and the man with a grin on his face and he statement you will never forget the first time you see one.

There are tons of things in this ad which warrant discussion about its statement about the dominant narrative. However, the first one which truly caught my eye was how, it reinforced the idea that if a women is dressed proactively she in some ways is asking to be seen automatically in a sexual way ( as we saw with the man who checked out the behind of the Italian supermodel who wore a short...