The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas has made a splash in advertising circles with a racy new print spread that portrays bellhops as a symbol of a very different kind of quality and service:

I’m all for the general recognition that heterosexual women like to look as much as heterosexual men, and that as consumers, we’re not necessarily going to be satisfied by the idea that, say, gorgeous women should settle for funny, schlubby guys who don’t have their lives together. But what struck me most about this ad wasn’t that the bellhop was naked below the waist—it was that we don’t see his face at all. It’s one of the most literal transfigurations of a man—and in particular, a service employee—into an object of consumption that I’ve seen. Men, when they become sex objects, are not generally considered to have handed in their brains in the same way that gorgeous women are often expected to behave as mute objects. Channing Tatum may take his clothes off in Magic Mike, but the whole point of the movie is that there’s a brain and a heart somewhere to the north of that gyrating pelvis. Giving heterosexual women eye candy may seem like a form of third-wave equality. But if the form of that eye candy becomes a race to the bottom where it’s not clear whether women or men are treated worse or presented as more powerless or unrealistic, that doesn’t seem like much of a win.

At CNet, executive editor Molly Wood chronicles the bizarre use of stereotypes of women in the Samsung GS4 launch:

The Brazilian woman was hot (duh). A bride-to-be arrives on stage with a chirpy, “check out the ring!” The Air Gestures that let you control the phone without touching it are presented as a boon to giggly women with annoying voices whose nails are wet and who don’t want to put down their drinks. The comically alcoholic one, DeeDee, then proceeds to demo how eye tracking can pause a video when you look away from the screen… as she looks away at a hunky gardener type who proceeds to take off his shirt.
“While the women are cooling down,” says the emcee, “why don’t you tell us about S Health?” By then, it’s almost too easy to have there be a joke about marrying a doctor and then the one about eating too much cheesecake ohyeahthatoneIshouldhaveseenthatcoming. Of course those jokes are in there. Why would those jokes not be in there? We already had a tap-dancing tow-headed kid and a hot Brazilian girl.

What I’m really curious about is whether this latest example of corporate stupidity when it comes to going to the laziest bits of the gender humor well was developed in-house by Samsung or by an outside advertising agency? If the latter, which ad agency? And on what basis did they recommend the use of stereotypes as hooks? I’d be really curious about the market research on which those decisions are based, given how many ads seem to be doing well by defying gender stereotypes. From Super Bowl ads featuring princesses who lead armies and laundry-doing ladies who are passionate and sneaky sports fans to the Kindle ad that treats gay married couple as if they’re a totally normal part of the mix, a lot of companies seem to want to treat women as actual people, or gay couples and the people who are friends with them as actual consumers. My bet is that tech companies in particular want to seem forward-looking in their gender politics as part of projecting a general sense that if you buy their products, you will be part of the future. But that just makes Samsung’s presentation more bizarre.

Today in male body image news, David Beckham apparently has been using a stand-in for shots of his posterior during an ad campaign for H&M. The explanation the brand gave doesn’t entirely track to me: if Beckham has enough time to be ogled by tourists, jump in a pool, and have his shirt torn off by hedges that a couple of shots of him readjusting his trunks would be the thing that busted the production schedule and had to get left off the list:

But I’m totally sympathetic to the idea that even David Beckham wants to make sure when his body isn’t in motion, when it isn’t being celebrated for its capacities, but merely as a piece of meat, that even he might want a substitute. There may be more variety in archetypal male body types in popular culture than there are for women. But when it comes to the kinds of bodies designers want to put clothes on, whether they’re walking the runway or posing in print and video ads, the standards for men and women are both pretty brutal. There’s been a lot of work done to expose what women put themselves through to meet the physical standards required of them to model, but it would be delightful to make it clear that the expectations for men aren’t any more realistic or attainable, even for ones who stay in shape professionally.

When the first couple of Captain Morgan commercials with Joshua Burrow playing the Captain came out, I was blown away. They were aesthetically beautiful fantasies where hot pirates take off their clothes to reveal pristine, white underwear and where rich people in Santo Domingo in 1661 don’t have African slaves (like I said, it’s a fantasy). More than that, the commercials took for granted that a character, who in the 1600s has a multicultural, woman-friendly pleasure boat and who doesn’t really respect class distinctions, would also have an interesting lack of other kinds of boundaries.

I’m trying to think of another case where a male character in popular culture is presented as being matter-of-fact-ly sexually appealing to everyone, who is throwing around as much “Wouldn’t it be more fun if we were… you know… having fun?”-face to people of all genders and all levels of attractiveness, and it’s presented as the epitome of masculinity.

The look that Captain Morgan gives the Spanish/Dutch

Bisexuality is pretty invisible in pop culture. Sometimes women are bisexual, but they, by and large end up with men in the end. Captain Morgan doesn’t end up with a woman, or at least not just a woman. He’s got a boat! Full of all sorts of interesting people.

In the first commercial, “To Life, Love, & Loot,” Morgan’s ship is being attacked by… um… who knows? I thought the Dutch from the hats, but it seems like it has to be the Spanish. Anyway, Morgan’s people are all getting ready to fire back, but Morgan instead walks through the boat, taking his clothes off as he goes, so that, by the time he gets to the gang plank, he’s in his underpants. One of his men looks at him as if to say, “My god, is he getting naked again?” Morgan then shoots the Dutch/Spanish a look that asks, “You really want to waste some fine shoulders like these?” He dives into the Caribbean, and, by the time he comes up, the Dutch/Spanish have decided they, too, love those fine shoulders and everyone cheers. I think it’s clear an orgy comes next.

Importantly, the camera focuses tightly on Burrow’s face quite a few times. At this early point, whoever is directing the commercial understands that Morgan’s charisma is pretty specifically linked to Burrow’s ability to seduce whole armies just by wiggling his eyebrows.

In the second commercial, “Glass,” Burrow’s eyebrow wiggling skills–second only to The Rock’s, I’m pretty sure–are forefronted. In this commercial, the crew is dining with some stuffy proper folks. A servant girl drops a glass and the mistress of the house, who has already been looking at Morgan with a mix of lust and disgust, seems to be prepared to deal with the servant in an unpleasant manner.

The look the Captain gives the grumpy woman's husband.

Captain Morgan to the rescue. He breaks a glass as well and then gives every other person at the table not already on his crew a look that says, “Wouldn’t it be more fun to all enjoy ourselves?” Everyone, even the scowling unpleasant mistress agrees. We can only assume that this, too, is followed by an orgy. (Hopefully, after someone sweeps up all the broken dishes.)

In both cases, though, the message of the commercials is simple and blunt–when you are in stressful situations with unpleasant people, a little Captain Morgan can make it easier to deal and and get you laid. By all of them.

For two glorious commercials, it was like nothing I’d seen in pop culture–a kind of genial, open hedonism where everyone is invited to watch and appreciate this hot dude, who is going to have sex with everyone he can get his hands on and they all want him to.

And then came the Captain Morgan Black commercials, which just suck. Captain Morgan is no longer promising you a taboo-pushing way to deal with your problems. Now, it’s just “Drink our product and it’ll be like escaping into a PG-13 version of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.” In every one of the Captain Morgan Black commercials, Morgan is either pulling someone away, being pulled away by a boat, or the camera is pulling away from him. Not only his he no longer lingering in places where he might instigate an orgy, the camera doesn’t linger on him (This is a real loss, not just because Burrow is fun to look at, but because he’s very interesting to look at. He conveys a lot of emotion with his face–the best part of All Dark Places, for instance, is him in a van by himself looking scarier and scarier–but, if you don’t get a good look at what he’s doing with his face, that doesn’t really matter, does it?). Gone is our carefree, hedonistic omnisexual and, in his place is a dude who looks just like him, but keeps a woman on his lap at all times–you know, just in case the first commercials gave us the wrong idea or something.

It’s so disappointing. For two commercials, Captain Morgan offered up a Bacchanalian fantasy the likes of which you don’t see on TV.

And now? We’re back to the traditional fantasy of commercials, where men are men and they like women, only–one pretty woman at a time–and other guys don’t appreciate the sexiness of a guy with fine shoulders, of course not. That’s too bad. It was awesome to see something that suggested other possibilities, if only briefly.

Over at Penny Arcade Report, Ben Kuchera talked to analyst Geoffrey Zatkin about the market conditions for video games that have only female protagonists, as opposed to male protagonists, or the choice to play as a male or female main character. There are a lot of insights in there worth considering, but this one stood out to me:

We know from our previous article that marketing spend is one of the few, if not the only, things that can overcome negative reviews. Television commercials, ads in magazines, and even shelf space in stores are all for sale, and the more you have to spend the better your game will sell.

Games with only female heroes are given half the marketing budget as games with male heroes. That’s an enormous handicap that cripples their ability to sell well. “Games with a female only protagonist, got half the spending of female optional, and only 40 percent of the marketing budget of male-led games. Less than that, actually,” Zatkin said.

So is this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Do publishers send female-lead games out to die without proper support? “I think it might be, and I think in some cases, though this is a guess, that these games may be considered more niche, and you advertise niche games less,” Zatkin said.

It’s also hard to draw many broad conclusions from this data. There are so few games with exclusively female heroes, and those few games are given such a small marketing budget, do we even know how well a large-budget, marketed game with a female hero would perform?

And this is exactly a point. I don’t want to hear that video games starring women don’t sell as those starring men unless you can show me a persistent failure of video games starring women that have received the same quality and investment in their advertising campaigns and rollouts. Don’t tell me that African-American actors can’t conquer international box office until you make the same efforts to build more Will Smiths as you do to build Taylor Kitsches and Daniel Craigs. Our assumptions about what works and what doesn’t, what will sell, and what won’t, are not natural laws. They’re decisions we’ve made.

Well, this is super-charming. Sony Computer Entertainment has gone up in French markets with an ad that compares the PS Vita, which has touch screens on both sides, to a headless woman with two sets of breasts:

I don’t know what’s worst about this. The photoshop of horrors that’s distorted the model’s arm? The depersonalization of the woman involved here? The idea that it’s cool to get to grope breasts without having to deal with an actual human with her own particular needs and responses? The idea that boobs=sales? I can’t even just be irritated on behalf of women. Remember, fellows: this industry, and many, many others, thinks you’re stupid, drooling, sexually deprived easy marks.