Voices: The Real Boob Tube
When I read about an "un-TV experiment" in which one is to watch any show for 15 minutes without sound, I didn't intend to try it out. A week later, however, I found myself face-to-screen with FOX network's news magazine program The Pulse as I dined on a hummus platter at Scranton watering hole The Bog.
My friends and I hadn't given more than a second's glance to the screen until the Miller Lite Catfight commercial aired. And aired again. And again almost immediate after that. Apparently the never-ending ratings game had resulted in someone's brilliant idea to do a story on the controversial commercial in which two curvier and bustier than thou women rip each other's clothes off during a "Less Filling/Tastes Great" argument before mauling each other first in a pool and later in cement.
I had never seen the commercial before and I still haven't seen the spot with sound. I think if I had seen the commercial in context, I more than likely would have rolled my eyes and quietly moved on to more pleasant thoughts. But the unique experience of viewing the infamous Catfight over and over, sans soundtrack, within the supposed journalist context of The Pulse, led to an oddly impassioned barside debate. As I downed my lager and ordered another, I thanked the goddess that I had minored in women's studies and attempted to form a impenetrable argument with which to disarm my helplessly drooling male companions. Okay, so maybe they weren't drooling exactly, but they were quick to pose the defensive sentiments I later read coming from the mouths of Miller.
The Catfight ad is funny because it "pokes fun at men's sexist views," stated company spokesperson Mollie Reilly to FOX news. Or as Miller Lite brand manager posed to USA Today in January, the Catfight commercial is "a hysterical insight into guys' mentality," a "lighthearted spoof of guys' fantasies."
Sorry, but it's just not funny that even the most empowered women will struggle to feel attractive after facing inadvertent comparison to this exaggerated ideal of feminine beauty. I further resent the task I face ahead in trying to convince my daughters (aged seven and five) that they don't have to look like Kitana Baker (less filling) or Tonya Ballinger (tastes great) to look good.
But my real problem with the commercial is that these women are celebrities now. They're no doubt bringing home truckloads of money for no better reason than their Playboy-grade physiques. And please don't tell me that they aren't respected - it's a bad argument because a woman deserves respect no matter how sexy she is - in this country anyone who has money is respected. It's the capitalist American way and those Catfighting boobs remind me of how sad that is with every bounce and jiggle.
It seems "boobs" (I hate the term, but it's the one they're using these days) are en vogue these days. The Baywatch babes are reportedly the preferred viewing material of our soldiers fighting in Iraq. And talk about male-friendly skies... Hooters Air made its debut in March. The Hooters girls aren't certified flight attendants and can therefore only assist the real thing (all puns intended), but in this age during which too many airlines are facing bankruptcy, Hooters Air plans to sell tickets at twice the going rate.
Despite broadcast primarily on late night TV and during NFL playoff games, Miller Lite's Catfight ad has faced censorship. In an early version produced by advertisers Ogilvy and Mather, Kitana and Tonya sealed the commercial with a kiss. The morale of the story would appear to be that it's O.K. to portray women as sexual beings, as long as their sexual promise is intended for male pleasure only. Yet television history was made on Tuesday when a pair of teenagers on the soap opera All My Children presented daytime viewers with the first ever on-screen lesbian kiss.
It's sad that poor Bianca, who came out in 2000, had to wait until 2003 to make out like her hetero friends, but it is poetic justice that men will just have to watch the soaps instead of the game (I know, they can always rent porn) if they want their fantasy to climax.
--alicia grega-pikul, 24 April 2003
