Why Mr Tayto wears a Mac
Full text of the statement released by the Rape Crisis Network Ireland (RCNI) on the recent controversy over the Hunky Dory rugby ads (embedded below). By Clíona Saidléar.
On Monday of this week Giovanni Trapattoni and Mr Tayto played footsie for the cameras to announce the Football Associations of Ireland’s latest commercial partner, Tayto crisps. Largo Foods CEO, Ray Coyle said, "We are delighted to link Tayto to Irish football and look forward to working with the FAI over the coming months".
He also playfully put forward Mr. Tayto as a potential player for the Irish football team. Our hearts lifted a little in these depressing times.
In the same week, the same company, Largo Foods, announced that they were ‘proud sponsors of Irish Rugby’. This time however, they were not being playful and ironic, despite their protestations; rather they were being provocative, cynical and offensive. The responses to the Hunky Dory ads were almost uniform in their condemnation and disgust.
While many of us rewound the news with our Sky Plus controls to smile at Trapattoni gamely grappling with the Man in the Mac, there were few of us laughing when we saw Largo Foods’ other venture into sports sponsorship.
The only people laughing, we all agreed, was probably Ms. Kirwan, Largo Foods’ Marketing Director, whose oversaw the cynical decision to exploit and denigrate women (and men for that matter), gaining her brand remarkable air and print space.
And this is not the first time that Largo Foods have gone down this road.
In 2005 their ad campaign drew almost identical censure on the grounds of being offensive for its objectification and denigration of women. This then is a marketing strategy already tested and perhaps proven.
But why does it matter if sports women are depicted as sexual objects? Sure it is all a bit of fun the spokespeople for Largo Foods have assured us, designed to lighten the mood of the recession.
To get serious for a moment - there is nothing funny about half the population being sexually objectified. There is nothing funny about images of scantily clad women attached to a message saying ‘tackle this’.
To point out the obvious, there is nothing funny about sexual assault. And an advert which can be seen to valorise and/or incite such is not harmless.
To give one example of the world Hunky Dory style messages support: a recent study by Kathleen Lynch and Anne Lodge documented how girls and female teachers in co-ed schools regularly experienced the threat of or actual sexually assault in school corridors. The ‘milder’ assaults took the shape of actual or attempted breast squeezing, bum pinching and crotch grapping. The boys described it as ‘a bit of fun’ and ‘harmless’ (sound familiar?), the girls described it as ‘running the gauntlet’.
No one challenged it.
Largo Foods may well support wholesome sports and family activity but they also actively support a world where girls and women are less safe.
Family friendly Mr. Tayto, shares the corporate ethos which shapes Hunky Dory.
The thought of Mr. Tayto loitering at the sidelines of FAI football summer camps, sporting his unseasonal, trademark red Mac, all of a sudden makes one slightly queasy.
Article Updated 2 May 2010: Embed ad
Photo shoot of one of the controversial ads