As a follow-up to last week’s Sexy Meat post, I bring you another series of advertisements for Rachachuros Seasoning.

(Courtesy of Ben at Suicide Food, who covered these ads last year. Timely, I am not.)

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Apropos my reintroduction of the “consuming women” series last week, I decided to create a second series of similar images I like to call “sexy meat.”

“Sexy meat” is a sort of hybrid of “consuming women” and “suicide food.” Whereas the “consuming women” series features women who are posed to resemble “meat” (or other consumable animal products), “sexy meat” is just that – “meat” that’s been sexed up, usually in a traditionally “feminine” manner (women, of course, being the sex class). Oftentimes, this “sexy meat” is flirtatious in appearance, seemingly beckoning the audience to devour her, hence the “suicide food” angle.

Possibly, the two types of images are so closely related – each is essentially an inverse of the other – that they might be grouped together, but I chose to tease out the differences for maximum visual impact.

The first series of photos I’d like to share is a collection of three adverts for Rachachuros Seasoning. Each ad features an animal corpse, arranged in a pornorific pose for the camera (i.e., the male gaze), a concept which is reinforced by the product’s tag line, “The Temptation of Taste”:

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Some time ago – we’re talking two years plus – I started a series on this blog called “Consuming Women.” My intention was to highlight examples of advertising campaigns in which the consumption of “meat” is likened to the consumption of women, usually by depicting women as obviously edible foodstuffs. My own personal Pornography of Meat, if you will.

Because I’m a scatterbrain and tend to bite off more than I can chew, I never got past post #2 in the series. Which is a shame – but, luckily, one that’s easily remedied!

For now, let’s start simple and return to the series’ roots: woman-as-fish. Classy.

For those who can’t view the image, the ad depicts a woman – a mermaid – lounging seductively on a table in what appears to be a fancy restaurant. Our mermaiden is surrounded by spoons, forks and knives, all of which will presumably be used to murder, dismember and eat her. And did I mention that she’s totally succulent and mouth-watering, in more ways than one?

In addition to reducing both women and fish to consumable commodities, something to be bought, sold and eaten, this ad for The Seafood International Market and Restaurant also draws upon a fairly popular gendered insult, in which women’s lady bits are likened to fish.

To be fair, I should note that the restaurant in question is located in Singapore; perhaps their slang differs in this regard. Would any international readers care to weigh in?

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In the latest installment of Target Women, Sarah Haskins takes on the meat-peddling, woman-hating fast food chain Carl’s Jr. for its extreme douchebaggery. While the “meat as sex” and “real men eat meat” memes are only tangentially explored, Haskins is in typical hilarious form, and demonstrates how the Carl’s Jr. (et al) commercials promote sexist stereotypes in the course of exploiting non-human animals. All in a day’s work, eh?
 

 
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Last month, I blogged about a series of ads for Hobie Kayaks, aimed at fishermen (“people,” I should say, except all the ads seem to depict men). The gist of the marketing concept is that the kayaks are so quiet that fishermen can stalk and overtake their prey with serial killer-like coldness and precision. Fittingly, shadowy fishermen in fedoras and trench coats are shown choking, knifing and shooting three very terrified fish. Fishermen as stone-cold killers, indeed.

As shocking as I initially found the ads, now I’m starting to wonder whether this is the beginning of a meme.

Take, for example, this ad series from Bass Pro Shops. The general concept actually isn’t all that objectionable; the three print ads are touting Bass Pro Shop’s camp sale with the slogan “Get the family ready. Bass Pro Shops camp sale.” (C’mon, who doesn’t love camping!?)

In the first ad, someone (Dad, presumably) has put some greenery around the toilet, in order to get the family ready to do their biz in the bushes:

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While searching the internets for the latest “meat-as-sex” Burger King commercial (BK’s Burger Shots, natch), I stumbled upon this SNL parody of BK’s “Whopper Virgins” series. I’m fairly certain that SNL is poking fun at BK for devising such an absurd and culturally insensitive campaign, but with varying levels of success.
 

 
Take, for example, the man who tried to run away with the Whoppers: “This food could feed my village for a month!” Here, Western excess as exemplified by Burger King is the butt of the joke, as opposed to the impoverished villager himself.

Other “subjects” seem puzzled; they’ve never seen a burger before, so they’re unsure what to do with it. The “Whopper as a hat” bit is deliberately over the top, but in trying to poke fun at BK’s idiotic PR stunt, SNL also mocks (unintentionally?) “those silly foreigners.” Or perhaps SNL means to imply that the BK “researchers” are the stooges, seemingly for expecting such behavior from the uncivilized heathens to begin with?

I only wish SNL had aimed their axe at the root of the problem, namely, the conflating of “meat” with sex, and “meat”-eating with masculinity.

Your thoughts?

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Usually, the makers and marketers of “meat”-based foodstuffs attempt to remove the finished product from its live animal origins as much as possible; by dismembering, reconstructing and altering animal corpses, then, butchers make it easier for consumers to conveniently “forget” that they’re consuming formerly sentient creatures.

Not Royco! Nope, they want you to know that those chicken and “beef” bouillon cubes are the real thing, baby! Whereas most people see an innocuous, flavorful cube of powder when they unwrap a bouillon, Royco makes it clear that there’s really a live (dead) animal buried within those indistinguishable powder particles.

First, their chicken bouillon:

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While I understand what they’re getting at, this series of print ads for Lifebuoy hand wash are unfortunate, to say the least:

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As a follow-up to Sunday’s disturbing series of ads for Hobie Kayaks (Truth in Advertising: Fishermen are stone-cold killers.), today I have an ad campaign for the Little Boys line of “gourmet” “sausage.” Apparently, this New Zealand-based company thinks that little boys are natural born killers.

Here we have two mischievous little rubes, about to decapitate a helpless chicken:

Or, in the words of The Inspiration Room, “One boy with a chicken and herbs, the other with a small axe. What possibly could they be up to next?” Such inappropriately cutesy language to describe animal abuse, dontchathink?

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When I first spotted this series of ads for Hobie Kayaks on Ads of the World, I was taken aback. Flabbergasted, actually.

This is some violent imagery – the kind you’d expect to see on the box of an adult video game.

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