Misojeanist

Levi's ad: wag your glow-in-the-dark moneymaker at The Donald!

Jerky Male Commercial Update

This week we report another stunning entry in the field from Levi's, now the country's leading Misogynist Jeans Brand. See if you can spot the misogyny!

The gripping plot: a beautiful woman is chased through the neighborhood by a large snarling dog. The dog trees the girl, biting her jeans leg. The girl jettisons the jeans. The dog reports back to the jerky male with the pants. The jerky male smirks at the woman, who has walked home in her thong and is now striking an alluring pose in the doorway with an "I hate you, let's fuck" expression on her face.

Let's recap: guy sets vicious attack dog on woman; woman strips to save life, is humiliated, goes crawling back, poses in thong; guy smirks.

Do men want to be that asshole? Do women want to do him?

That chick is pathetic. She should join a soccer team and meet some nice girls. She could do a lot better than that asshole.

"Our advertising," says Levi-Strauss, whose website, incidentally, still trumpets the company's sanctimonious reaction to 9/11, "conveys the values of our brands." Thus, in addition to promoting violence against women as a "value" (why mess with the classics?), they also give us Profiles In Butt-Thrusting, exemplified above by young Sissel Kardel, a "painter." Ms. Kardel models the new Levi's 515's, the first jeans designed to gently ease the wearer into an attractive "make me your bitch" posture.

But wait! There's more! Levi-Strauss may feel pangs for the victims of 9/11, and their brand may be more America-iconic than a blue-eyed Jesus draped in a flag, but it turns out the jeans are all cheap crap made by indentured slaves in China. That's right. They closed their last two U.S. plants last January. Why?

Two words: Wal-Mart.

Update update: This is not the first time that LS&Co advertising has used attack dogs to appeal to white male America's domination fantasies. Check this out.

Update the second: Twisty has obtained information suggesting that another Levi's commercial held the British record for most-complained-about advert from 1998 to 2003. The ad apparently featured a dead hamster.

Update the third: It had totally escaped my notice, what with the celebration girl-hating violence and all, but this commercial offends dog lovers too; they object to its "egregious stereotyping" of the pit bull. It's all in the point of view, I guess.