I meant to write a post about Padma Lakshmi's now-infamous "slutburger" ad for Hardee's/Carl's Jr. a while back, but somehow the chance to do so when it was still relevant slipped by me. So, I'm gonna do it now instead, when I haven't seen it on the air in weeks and no one cares. Awesome.
Still, here she is:
Anyone besides me want to help her lick barbecue sauce off her ankle now?
I consider my post-ad-watching desire to put my tongue in Padma's burger-filled mouth to be well within the realm of normality. However, it seems plenty of folks would rather call her a sell-out and accuse her of all manner of sexual indiscretion, rather than kiss her. And this, I both do not understand and find rather grotesque.
A few weeks ago, my mom sent me this little blurb about it from my hometown paper. It struck me as one of the most out-of-touch things I've encountered in a bit. First of all, it's author claims the slutburger ad is "the sort of thing you'd expect from a Paris Hilton" but not a "classy beauty" like Padma. Because only girls with porn vids running rampant through the corridors of the internet would dare flash cleavage while eating a burger, right? Certainly no one with goods enough to nab a preeminent novelist the likes of Rushdie would do that, right? Well, why the hell not?!
The blurb from The Tennessean's food blog wants to act like it's all indignant that this woman so often associated with schmancy food would dare lower herself to hawk fast food, but this surface argument that it's author is attempting to make holds absolutely no water. For Exhibit A to that effect, I bring you this behind-the-scenes video in which Padma explains her own personal nostalgia for shitty fast food burgers. And frankly, the idea that Padma Lakshmi, gosling-like goddess of the haute cuisine scene, has a big heart-on for a burger just makes perfect sense to me. I mean, I love labor-intensive, esoteric food as much as the next girl, but really? If you offered me a guacamole cheddar burger from Bobbi's Dairy Dip, a craphole ice-cream stand over on Charlotte in Nashville, I'd be on it so fast you'd think it was made of fuck-me shoes. Even the most committed gourmands among us still get all woody over the occasional junk food indulgence. It's not like that stuff doesn't taste good, even when we've gone to the trouble of refining our palates.
No, the problem with Padma's ad is not that she's eating a fast food burger rather than braised pork cheek on a bed of salsify and Jerusalem artichokes. It's that, as the food blogger says, she has a classy image and yet, in lending her fair countenance to Hardee's/Carls Jr., she's joined the ranks of other sluterific pop-culture-friendly ho-bags like poor Paris. Now, I've defended Paris before. I actually love that carwash fetish-girl burger ad. I think her vampy camera mugging almost makes up for her role as an unenthusiastic cunnilingus receiver in the aforementioned titty flick. She's sexy, she's clearly having fun with her well-heeled harlot image and she owns that ad. So the idea that it would be an insult to Padma to compare her to Paris is, well, insulting to Padma.
In reality, the import behind the rhetoric in that little newspaper post is the underlying assumption is that "classiness" and overt sexuality are incompatible. And to that, I ask, why can't Padma lick sauce from her fingertips and let us marvel at her stellar pecan-colored tits in that push-up bra and not still be a perfectly respectable food snob and ex-wife of a literary supernova? To use the term "tramp" (and mean it derogatorily) to describe Padma just reeks of the kind of advocacy for the compartmentalization of female sexuality that does no sexually comfortable woman any good at all.
Now, this is not to say that other Carl's Jr./Hardee's ads don't play on some problematic traditionally gendered behavioral stereotypes in which dudes become dim-witted, narcissistic cavemen and women become nagging harpies (although hot ones). But no one of either gender fares very well in those ads, and undoubtedly, only dumbasses who send email forwards like this one would think they're funny anyway. See Sarah Haskins' video commentary to that effect below. Haskins makes a worthy point regarding advertisers thinking they're clever in targeting the basest of aspects of culturally prescribed "manliness" and even goes on to demonstrate how Paris has talents for multitasking that exceed the norm:
However, Padma's ad isn't crass or puerile at all. It is, in fact, dreamy and nostalgic. And I continue to feel that her conflating of her sexual charisma with her foodie street cred seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Doing so is, most certainly, in keeping with her career trajectory thus far. I mean, it's not like she got hired on as the host of Top Chef because of her food knowledge. She got hired on because she knows food and because she's startlingly beautiful. (Some among us might argue that Tom Colicchio's smirking blue eyes don't hurt the show much either.) Even long before Top Chef, she put out this book. And if that cover doesn't draw a visual analogy between her body and all the luscious, juicy fruits of the world, I don't know what does.
It's hardly new news that food is sexy. There's also nothing revelatory about the idea that Padma Lakshmi is incredibly genetically blessed. So, saying she can't have her burger and make you want to fuck her too doesn't do much besides advocate the annoying cultural directive that women should lock their libidos in the bedroom and pretend they aren't all fuck-happy in their waking lives. I can't speak for Padma, but I do know that kind of compartmentalization is exhausting for me. And it also smacks of the kind of retrogressive restrictions on the behavior of women that, well, get us nowhere in terms of claiming our sexual personae as our own.
...Which is all just to say, if anyone wants to make me a guacamole cheddar burger with a good, black, crusty layer of carcinogenic char, I'll do my best Padma for you, all sexy-like.
8 comments:
Well, I have to say I thought it was a great ad, just a sensuous lady having a sensuous food experience. I never thought of it as 'slutburger', m'self...
In spirit, I agree with you. But sadly, all the uptight foodie-feminists were up one side of Twitter and down the other, calling Padma a floozy. Sigh. That kinda nonsense misses the point, in my honest opinion.
I think I get your point. I would love to talk about it more. Your point is smarter than this, but I too want people to be able to be sluts without being "sluts." But here's my rant: I think it's a stupid ad. The thought of sex and fast food makes me ill and that's possibly because when you go into your local Carl's Jr. you don't see beautiful very skinny "classy" rich literary ladies in there, for the most part you see us fat slightly depressed Americans, waiting in line for food rather than cooking because we're overworked and exhausted, working behind the counter for much less than a living wage because our small town is dying, beating our children because they're so hyper from all the sugar in the hamburger buns they're eating, etc. Carl's Jr.'s bottom line is that they're trying to make money and they know boobs make money. I fucking have orgasms over women claiming their sexual personae when it isn't commodified and inane. It doesn't feel like any kind of victory or step forward for sexuality (and neither does the article you criticize), it feels like the same old game that glamorizes crap to poor people using the same old tired sexual tropes.
Fair enough. I guess I take that underlying argument that you present for granted, in some ways. But I also feel like criticizing the MSM for giving us what we, collectively, demand of it is kind of a lost cause. Yeah, advertising seeks to sell us stuff. Yeah, advertising seeks to sell us stuff we don't need or that is bad for us or that might well bring down human civilization as we know it. Of COURSE that's what it's doing. And, yeah, of course it's gonna use the promise of flesh to get us all bellying up to the cash register. That it does all these things is just a fact of our existence about which I can't seem to muster the proper rancor anymore.
What does get me, however, is wholesale, thoughtless slut-shaming, as perpetrated by folks who want to call themselves feminists. Really, the backlash against this particular ad is just an example of what happens every time a woman insists upon taking control of the inevitability of that thing we've come to call "objectification."
And that's the thing to me-- acknowledging that a large part of desire is about looking, regardless of the genders of the desirer or the desiree. In other words, objectification is unavoidable if we ever get around to engaging with other humans sexually. Therefore, the best we can do is make conscious decisions about what we do with our images. For me, that's making a point to not extricate that which is sexual about me from all the parts of my life that aren't specifically sexual. The sex thing is always there. Pretending like it's not wears me out. And that ends up manifesting in my explicit admittance that I actually like being looked at and feel like that's an integral part of my public persona. If I could make money off that, well, so much the better-- but alas, it seems I'm not cute as all that.
But I guess the point concerning this ad in particular is that Lakshmi really did write about this particular burger in one of her books. She knows what she looks like. She's made a living off her appearance for quite some time. And she also knows what Carl's Jr. ads look like. It seems to me, as reflected in the behind-the-scenes video I linked, that she's entirely in control of the version of herself she presents here. So, because she herself has chosen to participate in this sort of commercial culture, I don't really feel like it's my place to criticize her for a) exercising her prerogative or b) making the most of the consumerist landscape in which she-- and the rest of us-- live. My beef is really with the people who seek to call her names because they see a conflict between being rich, beautiful and "classy" and doing something vulgar like eating a burger and hiking up her skirt on camera.
Perhaps it boils down to the fact that advertising, by its very nature appeals to a pretty low denominator. It is what it is. participation in its far-reaching venture is inevitable. So, then, what's the point in saying snarky things about the people who've worked the system to their benefit?
Now, I know you're not, actually, criticizing Lakshmi herself. Your target is all the nasty coronary-on-a-bun-hawking that's going on around, and using the face of, Lakshmi. But all that is really beyond the scope of this post, I think. If I really wanted to take on all the problems that equating sex with all the stuff our TVs tell us we can buy... well, I'd probably be stuck behind my computer screen for the rest of my burger-loving life. And that idea makes me tired too.
[And here's the rest:]
I recently finished Daniel Bergner's book, The Other Side of Desire. In in, he sites several psyciatric research studies that suggest virtually all paraphilias are biological in nature-- that they stuff from subtle differences in brain chemistry. There are, of course, plenty of studies that say the opposite, but for the purpose of my argument here, let's assume that paraphilias are a biological part of our brains' make-ups. The book also notes that virtually all studies agree that predilections toward submission and exhibitionism are numbers 1 and 2, respectively, on the list of most common kinks among women. So, what happens, then, if those sorts of behaviors that bear no small amount of erotic charge for a lot of women, are actually a natural part of our constitutions and NOT, as previously supposed, fucked-up deviations caused by internalizations of various manifestations of the patriarchy? I'm not real sure yet, but it does seem as though that would bulldoze a hill or two on the landscape on which we think about female sexuality, no?
Here's where I land with all that: I'm looking forward to the day on which I and all the other kinky girls can openly claim the sex we want to have and the things that arouse us most without a) being accused by the feminist crowd of being in collusion with a patriarchal regime or b) being accused of being damaged goods by the men we'd theoretically like to fuck. I'm NOT looking forward, however, to the day on which I no longer get off on having guys stare at my tits or grind my face into pillows. Those things are too closely tied to the deep-down ineffable fuck-vibe I NEED to feel to get off.
So, yeah, this is from whence my argument came. And why I felt like the backlash against the slutburger ad made for a good example. Again, taking on commodified femaleness in advertising is really another fight for another day. A day when I'm REALLy well-rested.
In a follow-up comment to that weird rambly thing I wrote last night, after an exhausting day of attemtping to salvage all the sentimental remnants of my childhood that got damaged when my storage unit in my building's basement flooded yesterday, I'd like to reiterate a couple things in more coherent fashion and then bring an additional thought to the table.
a) Sommer, I think we're making really separate arguments. By your reasoning, one could argue that virtually all advertising is stupid because it is made for the purposes of instigating an aquistional object-lust in any and all comers. And well, yeah, that IS what advertising does and yeah, there is something particularly wonky about ads that associate the female body with other things than can be bought. I could never argue against that stance, because you're right-- all that IS ooky.
It's just that I think my post was really only using the ad, and the internet commentary it generated, as an example of something I see a lot: a vague yet culturally driven urge to cover up female skin when it's found in someplace that we've sort of arbitrarily decided is a bad place for it to be seen. Like on a foodie ex-wife of Salman Rushdie, for example. That, to me, is restrictive and troubling because, well, from the minute I leave my house in the morning until the moment I close my door behind me (and sometimes even after that, if I leave the curtains open) I'm keenly aware of the fact that I get a daily, consistent, low-level erotic charge from being looked at. Embracing my, um, "inner object nature," so to speak, is a really necessary part of how I conceptualize my own sexuality. And I don't think I'm the only woman who operates that way either. So, my point is that I get a little huffy when I see women criticizing other women for playing the peacock-- er... peahen... er... uh... whore(?). Right?
Here's a link to debauchette's essay from her new online magazine F/lthyGorgeousTh/ings that says something similar: http://filthygorgeousthings.com/voyeur/lust-debauchette/pictures-of-naked-girls
Her second paragraph, in which she easily dismisses the old-school feminist argument of female collusion with the "male gaze," I think, is just spot-damn-on! I think that decaying, fetid stance seeks to insist that women are so deeply victimized by our culture that we've adapted our own sexuality to be nothing but a mirror of men's. And I find that argument, which is supposed to be pro-woman, to be very insulting. Whether or not my getting off on being looked at is a direct result of having existed within the parameters of a culture that supports men's rights to look at women, I still get off on being looked at. The backstory of cultural heritage is irrelevant when there is actual sex on the table. And yet somehow I'm supposed to be ashamed that something that doesn't strictly adhere to a feminist agenda makes me lubricate? What kinda crap is that?
[Blogger is suddenly telling me I have a 4,096 character limit in comments, so this will continue in my next comment. WTF, Blogger?]
Here's my 2 cents worth: I agree that equating sexiness and fast food is a bit disgusting, as Sommer points out, there's not a day you could walk into a fast-food joint and find anything more than some disgusting grease. I think the commercial is sexy because Padma is sexy, and that's the only thing sexy about it!
The blurb in The Tennessean is something else, though: the writer comes off as jealous (a hint--'men love her, blah blah blah) and insecure. She seems to be doing nothing but trying to reaffirm stereotypes about her own sex, and she also states she wouldn't mind seeing a hot guy in the same kind of ad. Double standards, indeed.
The thing I find most insulting is that her poor writing coupled with her utterly uninformed and uninspired opinion was published in the first place.
There's MY rant for the day.
YOu know what? I think it's been at LEAST 5 years since I've been inside a fast food restaurant. I have only faint recollections of their fluorescent waste-scapes and zombie-fied, zit-ified staff-persons. But, um, I thank you both for the reminder that it's a good idea NOT to consider going in one again any time sooon.
Post a Comment