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(Sorry for the infrequent posts all, I’m in the middle of midterm week….ugh, twenty-one chapter plus lectures….)

So I’m surfing around on the blogosphere and happen to run across Jenn Fang’s blog, reappropriate.com. She has a couple of posts that really intrigue me, to say the least. I really enjoy her blog and respect her opinions. The ones which most stood out to me at the time, were the posts regarding Chinese Laundry’s (an Asian restaurant) Ad campaign, which dehumanizes Asian woman. (To get an understanding of this ad, you can see it here.)

Simply put, I think it’s disgusting and distasteful to women in general. In my humble opinion, as far as what Jenn has stated in her blog (regarding the ad implies diner’s “domination of the East gastronomically and sexually”) however, is a bit of a stretch. Although it’s certainly oozing with “sexuality”, does it really imply that diner’s will be able to consume Eastern food as much as they would “hope to consume and conquer the Asian women”? Who’s to even say that the image is of an Asian women at all (yes, I know, it’s implied to be an Asian women since the ad is for a Chinese restaurant, but one isn’t “for sure”, no matter how much it doesn’t make sense)?

image credit: www.tvblanket.com

Sex sells. There’s no doubt that the ones responsible for the ad used sexuality to draw potential customers to the restaurant. It’s certainly beyond tacky, and is rather degrading to all women…however I don’t think there’s any subliminal messages regarding Eastern “conquering” going on.

Any publicity is good publicity. Certainly Jenn’s objectives weren’t focused on Chinese Laundry’s bottom line. I wouldn’t be surprised however, if this whole anti-ad campaign has helped Chinese Laundry’s business more than it has harmed it.

While I don’t agree with Jenn’s perception that there’s “Asian-women-dominance-for-the-diners” being portrayed in Chinese Laundry’s ads, I do agree, however, that it is ads like these that are very disrespectful for women. Perhaps there’s a lot more to do before we really achieve gender equality.

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