Spirit Airlines Fail: MUFF Diving and MILF Specials

Relying on crude frat boy slang that treats women like sex toys to sell airline tickets is just about as idiotically pathetic as it gets. Spirit Airlines' recent ad campaign for MUFF Diving (they claim "MUFF" refers to "Many Unbelievably Fantastic Fares" -- do you want to vomit as much as I do?) is so bad, and so gross, that it nearly defies analysis. But, simply because I hope to encourage you all to never fly with Spirit, I'll give it a go.

First off, in case you think the whole brilliantly conceived "Muff Diving" campaign was just a bizarre fluke, in which a 16 year-old boy drunk on "American Pie" and porn sent in an idea for a super funny ad, dude, and got it accepted, let me clarify that Spirit Airlines has been there, done this before.

There was a "MILF" campaign in early 2009 that encouraged passengers to take advantage of MILF fares (That's "Mother I'd Like To Fuck" for those of you who don't keep up with the latest women-as-sex-objects-for-our-amusement lingo) and -- even better -- to check out the flight attendants' DDs. If you are gaping in horror right now, you're not alone: the flight crews on Spirit Airlines had to go to their union to demand these ads be pulled, to which Spirit Airlines management responded that the DD refers to "deep discounts" and "MILF" is obviously "many islands low fares."

Does this make you want to slap some fresh-faced 24-year-old marketing misogynist across the face?  Yeah, me too.

It's really nice that Spirit Airlines can inspire people to get a kick out of treating women like dumb, passive sex toys for "clever" marketing purposes, and can use women's boobs and vaginas as funny, crude jokes for men to elbow each other with a little guffaw and sign up for a Spirit flight. It's sweet that they can use their flight attendants as punch lines in a man-to-man chuckle about Double D boobs. It's charming that their idea of a good publicity stunt is to drum up the most sexist term possible for a woman's vagina, exploit it in the crassest way possible, and then play dumb saying "oh, no, it means 'Many Unbelievably Fantastic Fares.'" Cute.

Would this ever be acceptable if they'd exploited race or ethnicity or sexual orientation in a similar way, using similarly insulting and offensive terms? Why is this okay when it comes to women? We're supposed to laugh it off as an edgy publicity campaign and not as a reinforcement of deeply messed up societal treatment of women with real consequences (objectification of women, sexual harassment, rape)? Because it might not be acceptable to play around with cheap and harmful stereotypes of other groups, but it's A-O.K. to sell an airline ticket with boob jokes.

You can take action and tell Spirit Airlines to pull these offensive ads now by signing this petition.

Photo credit: Skampy's Photostream