[dropcap]Y[/dropcap]ou may have thought that the recent controversy surrounding the video produced for SFU to promote National Sweater Day was overblown, or as one online commenter charmingly said, that the reaction was “feminism run amok,” but there is so much more wrong with this video than its representation of gender stereotypes — although that is a very good place to start.
The video involves a female instructor named “Miss Pinkham,” and a male student named “Chad.” The only way we can understand what this video is getting at or why it is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek is because it is based on assumptions about gender.
Miss Pinkham is very pleased with herself as she turns down the heat and puts on a tight pink sweater while suggestively letting down her hair. When Chad walks past her office and does a double take, he backs up to tell Miss Pinkham how good her sweater looks. His eyebrow raising and hushed voice are flirtatious, and seem to suggest that he is referring to more than just her sweater. Miss Pinkham’s sly smile and reaction to this attention is that of a giddy school girl.
The video assumes that a female instructor such as Miss Pinkham is open to and would very much enjoy flirtatious, sexually suggestive attention from a much younger male student, and her giggle at the end of the video seems to suggest that any amount of male attention will leave a woman beside herself with delight.
The way Chad replies to Miss Pinkham’s thanks with an emphatic “thank you” places her in the role of a sexual object. Chad is appreciative of Miss Pinkham’s appearance, and lets her know that she has fulfilled this role for him.
This video has the makings of the opening scene of a bad porno.
Aside from all the issues with the gender representations in the video, there is the highly inappropriate suggestion that flirting and sexual innuendo between a student and an instructor is nothing more than some light-hearted fun. Miss Pinkham should not be flirting back when Chad compliments her, and Chad should not be flirting with an instructor, but in the context of this video it seems there is nothing wrong with this behaviour.
Let’s talk about the tagline at the end: “Saving energy is sexy.” It seems that the producers of this video wanted to promote National Sweater Day using the idea that ‘sex sells,’ but there are much better ways they could have done this. For example, we could eliminate all the strange instructor-student innuendo with a scene of a couple wearing cute sweaters and cuddling in a dorm room with the heat turned down. They could have also ditched the assumption that to promote something you have to connect it to sexual attractiveness and simply made a humorous video.
All put together — the letting down of the hair, the suggestive eyebrow gymnastics, the hushed voices, the instructor-student relationship, and the giddy school girl laugh — this video has the makings of the opening scene of a bad porno.
If you initially dismissed this video as simply a harmless scenario that supports a good cause all in good fun, then you would have been perpetuating all of the assumptions and stereotypes that it is based on. Dismissing this video as harmless is not productive, and is in fact as harmful as we work to eliminate the assumptions that are inherent within it.
The actor who played Chad is actually Gay… Oh the irony…