AdBust It Baby!

I felt that this ad, while not quite creating blatantly misogynistic or sexist dreamworlds, still blatantly uses gendered implications in its artwork and marketing.  These gendered implications range from explicitly referencing women's sexual organs with the pear acting as a spot of heightened stimulation, to implying a natural aspect of motherhood and childbirth.

In artwork, femininity has sometimes been embodied in the form of flowers (for good examples, see Georgia O'Keefe's paintings of flowers).  These can be beautiful and empowering works of feminist art, but Absolut Vodka's use of this style of artwork to sell vodka demonstrates an artistic appropriation of women's bodies in order to benefit capitalism.  I believe the advertisement uses these green, flowing, aesthetically beautiful artistic representations of the layered aspects of women's sexual organs as an attempt to appeal to women, who will (in the minds of advertising directors) sympathize with the artwork and be more likely to identify with this vodka.

  

By placing the pear in the middle of the flowing green "vagina", the advertisement can be interpreted as implying that the pear is either the clitoris, a child or something else...possibly a male member???  The use of the word "naturally" in the written advertisement at the bottom of the page implies even more layers of femininity and what it means to be a "natural" woman.  The whole theme of "natural" in this advertisement is the thing that really bothers me because it is quite exclusive.

When the advertisement says, "comes naturally", they are possibly trying to play on both male and female insecurities surrounding natural orgasms.  Absolut Pears is presented as an (Absolut)ion to these anxieties and problems.  If anything, the effects vodka will probably make those insecurities worse...

Basically, this advertisement artistically appropriates women's bodies and sexual organs, using them in an exploitative, capitalist manner.

Love and shit like that,

Danarchy