More like horrendous. And apparently, as Copyranter reports on Animal New York, no one is laughing:

The Kraft women are furious and the men embarrassed. That's understandable, especially considering that the Kraft CEO is a woman.

Okay: Chicken talk is full of ridiculous stuff — was it Frank Perdue who said "My breasts are as tender as my thighs"? But doesn't this qualifiy as sexual harassment in the workplace? Someone thought it was cheeky, or clever, or funny, but it comes off as rude and crude. It's an awkward campaign. Surely the idea was to grab people's attention, but it's been done in the worst possible way. At least they didn't incorporate the retro catchphrase, "And I helped!"

Saggy Tit Joke Right in The Kraft Headquarters Lobby [Animal New York]

Golden is 79 — "I say 80 because it's more impressive" — and worked as a copywriter on Madison Avenue until the eighties, when she started her own radio advertising company, Joy Radio. It was exclusively focused on humorous radio, "because I'm funny." Here she is doing an AMC promo for Mad Men, part of a series of Madison Avenue legends. She admits to "hanking and panking — but it was always elegant."

What was it like to be among the first generation of women in advertising? "At the time I didn't think about it. I really didn't," she said. "I was just happy to get a job right out of college. I didn't think about the social aspects of it." As she rose through the ranks, Golden learned how to assert herself. "By the time you go to be a copywriter you were no longer in the secretarial pool. I learned not to be a pushover, just like Peggy in the series."

In Selling The Sixties, in a segment originally taped for Mad Men DVD extras (above), Golden talks more about on what life was like for a woman in advertising back then. "You just had to kind of keep away from the guys, at least I did. I was cute in those days so they used to knock on my cubicle, so to speak. 'You wanna have lunch?' 'No.'" (Bonus: legendary journalist Gay Talese says there were no attractive women at The New York Timesat the time because they were all in advertising.) Overall, she was thrilled by the work itself and the excitement around it.

But it didn't last. "Things changed," Golden told me. "What happened is, it became technological creative rather than creative creative… so we all kind of lost our hearts."

Right around them, George Lois came by to chat. Earlier, he had explained that he had been getting dozens of emails telling him he was right about Vogue. Golden complained that he and Gay Talese had been cut off from their Esquire reminiscences in the panel earlier that night.

"I was kind of getting to a punchline, wherever I was," Lois said. "I'm always about to get to a punchline."

"That's the story of life," said Golden. As Lois left, she said coquettishly, "Do you kiss old ladies?"

"Of course I do," he said, leaning in affectionately. "I kiss old ladies who are eighty but look like they're sixty." He left, promising to do a Jezebel interview.

A few minutes later, Golden turned to me. By way of goodbye, she said, "You have my permission to make me famous again."

On Tuesday, I went to an Accompanied Literary Society screening for Selling the Sixties,, a BBC documentary that, unfortunately, isn't scheduled to be aired in the U.S. anytime soon. But the account of how research became a tool for advertising to efficiently exploit desire, sexualizing even the most basic transactions, was so strikingly related to the conversations we have here that I begged for a DVD in order to share a relevant clip.

Whereas in the first episode of Mad Men Don throws a dour Freudian psychoanalyst's report into the garbage, it's clear from this clip that his real-life contemporaries weren't quite so dismissive. Early 60s consumers were becoming jaded and unmoved by the simple pitch. Enter Ernest Dichter, the Viennese psychoanalyst who created "motivational research," tapping into what he saw as the deepest desires of consumers.

He was also a pioneer of the focus group, including the one seen here, where a woman straightfacedly says of a salad dressing, "I think that it has a place in our American way of life."

Selling The Sixties [BBC]

The clip shows a balding middle-aged white man in the center of a circus ring. He looks nervously around, and the camera pans to show the aggressor: a black panther-woman in a gold bikini. She commands him to "dance... to the rhythm... strip!" while repeatedly calling him "baby." The cat-woman growls at him and cracks her whip while he strips down to his socks and awkwardly sways back and forth.

It's pretty clear that this man is not enjoying the experience. Melissa McEwan from Shakesville notes that the selling point is apparently that "Orangina Red will turn you into a sexually aggressive monster." She argues that there is no ambiguity to this scene of assault:

And before anyone gets it in their head to argue that this isn't a sexual assault, but instead a scene of a dominatrix and a consenting customer, I'll just note that the setting of the ad is a circus ring. She's literally treating him like a performing animal, and he appears to be utterly terrified. I am acquainted with someone who worked as a professional dominatrix for many years; men went to her to be punished, not petrified-and if someone had become visibly frightened of her, she would have stopped. Images of dominatrices thrilling in hurting scared, vulnerable men are images of sexual assault, not of anything a consent-insistent sex worker does.

However, many people will probably see this ad and think it funny, not offensive or strange. Yet try imagining it with the genders reversed: A terrified woman strips uncomfortably while a large, muscular man-animal growls at her and commands her to dance. My guess is that far fewer people would find that humorous. Once again, sexual assault committed against men is viewed as hilarious - as are violent and aggressive women.

Even without the violence, this ad is full of problems. There is the woman-reduced-to-a-cat theme, which by this point is just getting kind of tired. Call me when we start seeing some sexy rhinos (although there is a hot M&M, so I suppose even this is possible). Copyranter, posting on Animal New York, also suggests that there is an element of racial tension underlying the exchange:

It's the latest spot in Orangina's animated anthropomorphized nympho animal campaign, where we previously witnessed a giraffe-girl sniffing a rollerblading guy's ass. Now, a buff busty melanistic big cat (I'm envisioning Naomi Campbell) dominates a stereotypical White Man in a big tent setting. Is that a penis peek I spy? The spot sizzles with sexual and racial tension, RAWWRR!

That panther-thing reminds him of Naomi Campbell? This may say more about the author's views than the agency's. Either way, we can probably all agree Orangina has unleashed something that is all-around disturbing, and not at all appetizing.

Today In Rape Culture [Shakesville]
Orangina's Black Panther Dominatrix [Animal New York]

The interactive aspect of the campaign, which basically entails watching "our shower babe shake her bits to the hits at 9.30am every morning" is that you can vote on the song and the bikini. (So maybe it's not just for 18-25 year-old boys. Because it involves fashion! I vote fried egg bra.)

But okay, we know we're not the demographic for this campaign. As I recently learned, YouTube is the ultimate arbiter of the viral video sensibility (especially when it literally involves bathroom humor!), and the rest of us are a gaggle of idiots who have nothing better to do than to suck the last drop of humor out of life." So what's the word from the people on the audition outtakes the agency calculatedly loaded to YouTube?

Oh. Okay. So it's unanimous.

Singing In The Shower [Burger King UK]
Singing In The Shower Auditions [YouTube]

Related: The Last Word On Method's Horny Shiny Suds [AdRants]

Earlier: Ladyblog Commenters Ruin Everything

Double X's KJ Dell'Antonia writes,

Senators Jim Moran (Va.) and Bill Pascrell (N.J.) have introduced the Healthy Kids Act, which proposes "specifying categories of foods and beverages for or about which any advertisement, promotion, or marketing directed at children and youth shall be an abusive, unfair, or deceptive act" and limiting advertising for certain other foods and beverages-presumably the slightly less objectionable ones-to two minutes an hour on weekends, three on weekdays.

It's true that limiting advertising directed at children, like increasing the penalties for sex offenders, is a perennially popular measure. Few parents haven't heard their kids beg for Koala Yummies* after catching a TV commercial, and some research suggests that kids' eating habits are influenced by what they watch. Dell'Antonia points out that without regulation, companies have every incentive to keep pushing Miley-Cyrus-shaped-mac-and-cheese-whatevers** on undiscerning little brains, and that limiting said pushing is thus "good policy." It may be true that restricting advertising might reduce some kids' cravings for salt, sugar, and yellow no. 5, but Dell'Antonia also identified a much bigger culprit for children unhealthy eating habits: the government. She writes,

In September, Michael Pollan noted in an editorial in the NYT that, with the proposed health care bill, the federal government is "putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating Type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup." The Healthy Kids Act would have that same government encouraging the production of foods and beverages containing high-fructose corn syrup, but discouraging their consumption. It seems cynical to call that progress, but I guess we'll have to take what we can get.

Until farm subsidies quit making Industrial Grade Fructose Snax^TM artificially cheap, it may not matter much whether advertisers make them artificially attractive. So rather than trying to keep kids in the dark about all the delicious varieties of corn syrup glutting supermarket shelves, maybe we should concentrate on filling those shelves with brussels sprouts instead, via agricultural that encourage farmers to grow food that doesn't make you die. Then TV regulators can worry about what really matters — why the women on kids shows are so hot these days.

* Are these still around? They were delicious.
** I don't know what kids are eating these days. Get off my lawn.

You Can't Sell That On (Kid's) Television [Double X]
Cultural Milestone Of The Week: Screw Sesame Street! Sexy Entertainers Are Steaming Up Kiddie TV Shows [Details]

• On the heels of reports that Going Rogue confirms there was tension between Sarah Palin and John McCain's aides during the 2008 campaign, Ann Coulter says, "Wow, I hope she pays them back in this book, and I can't wait to read it. No, I mean, McCain — he was the media's favorite Republican. So, any criticism his side made of Palin was instantly printed, and now we finally get the payback. And I'm looking forward to it." • Palin will visit Fort Hood next month as part of her book tour for Going Rogue. She planned the visit before last week's shooting, and a representative from the base called her and said she should still make her planned appearance on December 4. • The British government has proposed a ban on people under the age of 18 using tanning beds to reduce the risk of young people developing skin cancer. It was reported today that in some areas of the U.K. up to half of all girls aged 15-17 are tanning, which doctors say significantly increases the risk of malignant melanoma. • In February, Jen Ivers will become the first female student to participate in the Mr. Yale contest. Ivers prefers to dress as a man, is openly gay, and doesn't identify as a man or a woman. Her residential college overwhelmingly voted for her to represent them, but initially the college rejected her application. Yale claims it was a miscommunication and a rep says, "It'll be really cool and unique to have her compete." • Scientists from the University of California tested the pain threshold of 25 women in various situations and found that they didn't hurt as much when their romantic partner was holding their hand, and experienced even less pain when just looking at his picture. Researchers say the person's picture brings up pleasant thoughts, but when they're actually in the room they may be upset that their partner is worried about them. They recommend patients bring loved ones' pictures to painful procedures. • Jill Berry, president of the Girls' Schools Association, says that schools should tell teenage girls that they don't need to beat themselves up if they decide to take time off from their future careers to raise children. ''They will need to realise that there may be times when they might not want to work, or they might want to take a lesser job because their priorities have changed. It is important that they leave school at 18 with their eyes open," she said. • Kirsty Moore, who became the first woman admitted to Britain's Royal Air Force display team, says she hopes her position will make girls "think that this is something they could be part of and they should go for it." • Caster Semenya says after the international controversy over her gender, "People want to stare at me now. They want to touch me. I'm supposed to be famous but I don't think I like it so much." • Oreo, the dog who was nursed back to health after her owner threw her off the roof of his six-floor Brooklyn apartment building, was killed today by lethal injection. After Oreo's owner was convicted of animal cruelty many people offered to adopt her and pay for her medical care, but the A.S.P.C.A. said she was a danger to the public because she was "unpredictably aggressive." Supporters had requested that the organization delay the euthanization and negotiate the dog's transfer to an animal sanctuary. • No African country has developed a program to give the cervical cancer vaccines to girls, even though 71,000 of the 500,000 who are diagnosed with cervical cancer every year are from Africa, and 78 percent of cases result in death. Professor Lutz Gissman, one of the researchers who discovered the virus said, "If you can persuade [African] girls to get a vaccine shot, the problem will be drastically reduced in the next 10, 20 years." • Police are hunting for a Brazilian blogger they say posted the names of 300 people who are cheating on their partner in the small rural town of Lagoa da Prata on Orkut. "This is not a very nice joke – for people to say that your boyfriend or your husband is a cuckold," says one woman whose boyfriend's name was on the list. "I don't really know what to say to people." • Police arrested a Florida man who repeatedly called 911 and made sexual comments to the dispatcher, asking to come to her house. There's a perfectly reasonable explanation: He told police that he'd run out of cell phone minutes and 911 was the only number he could call. •