Paris Hilton Beer Ad Banned In Brazil

It's not particularly shocking that Paris Hilton made a "sexy" beer commercial for the Brazilian brew Devassa, in which she does a mock striptease in a little black dress and rubs a Devassa beer can over her body while crowds ogle her from the streets and a photographer takes photos of her from a nearby apartment building.

It's not particularly shocking to see beer ads that are based entirely on women dousing themselves in the stuff while men ogle them or, in this case, snap illicit photos of them from afar (hot to think about a man in the building across the street taking photos of you, huh? Nothing like a stalker to make me want a beer).

But what is somewhat shocking is the fact that Brazil lashed out against the ad. The country's advertising regulations prohibit ads that treat women as "overtly sexual objects," and individual consumers and the Brazilian Secretariat for Women's Affairs filed complaints saying that the ad was degrading to women, particularly to blond women. Conar, Brazil's self-regulatory agency, which is charged with ensuring that "models won't be treated as sex objects," is looking into the case.

Can I say it loud enough: Go, Brazil! Bravo! It's about time somebody spoke out about ads that unabashedly and proudly flaunt women as one-dimensional sex objects who will sleep with you if you eat such and such hamburger or use such and such deodorant. Not only is this degrading, and not only does it feed into a culture that treats women as sexual candy and men as dumb dogs willing to buy anything they've rubbed on themselves, it's also just plain old. Haven't we outgrown this tasteless crap by now? It seems so 90s. Move on, beer companies -- find some way to sell your product that doesn't involve a half-naked woman doing a striptease.

What's most surprising about this whole affair is how the media's reaction to it has been mostly to shout, "What, that ad's not even hot!" Do a Google search: about half the results will come up with something like "Paris Hilton Ad Too Sexy For Brazil!" The stories will then profess thinly veiled disgust that a country as open as Brazil would find an ad that's so obviously tame (it's not like the one with Paris washing the car in some black lingerie number, after all!) too sexy, entirely missing the point that Brazilians don't object to the ad because it somehow offends their delicate Puritan sensibilities, but because it exploits women. Yes. We don't like to see those two words in print, but THAT is the objection to the ad, NOT that it's too sexy.

The media cannot seem to get a grip on the fact that Brazil might be sexually "liberated," women might walk around in bikinis and be completely comfortable with their bodies, and yet this doesn't mean that commercials that treat women as mere sex objects to sell products are okay. Why is that so hard to grasp? Women can be sexual and sexy, they can wear thongs and miniskirts, and that still doesn't mean that they want to be exploited as dancing mannequins to sell beer.

Go Brazil. Here's to hoping they stick with it and keep reinforcing the fact over and over that sexy does not have to mean dumb and exploitative.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons