In this first commercial, which Margaret posted last week, the woman promoting the shoes is checked out twice by the cameraman, who just can't help but zoom in on her backside. "Excuse me," she says to the cameraman as he blatantly checks her out, "I take it you agree?" She then smiles as if being objectified by some cameraman is the best thing in the world. Charming.
Here, the shoes show a female body, without a face, to promise that using the shoes will ensure that "88% of men will be speechless, 76% of jealous, and 0% will know the reason is on your feet." Because those are the only reasons women care about fitness, right? Not because heart disease is the number one killer of women, and not because they want to live healthy lifestyles and feel good about themselves, silly! Women only work out for the benefit of men and to ensure that other ladies are "just jealous."

This super classy ad, the worst of them all, shows a woman's breasts—and only her breasts—complaining about being jealous of her butt, which has improved since she started using EasyTone sneakers. "Make your boobs jealous!" a male announcer says at the end of the commercial. So now it's not even enough to make other women jealous, you have to make your own body parts turn against each other. My boobs actually felt sorry for my brain when it had to process the amount of bullshit in these three ads, and my eyes were jealous of my toes for being tucked deep in my socks, away from this sexist mess. Thanks, but no thanks, Reebok. You can kiss my butt, and my money, goodbye.

(Go ahead and check it out first, so you can see what we're discussing here. I'll wait.)

First of all, I think the ad is pretty effective: You know exactly what's being sold and what it looks like; the clip is memorable.

But is it "empowering to women," as Copyranter claims? That's debatable. You could view the woman in the commercial as confident and self-assured; or you could see her as the embodiment of a Western stereotype: The vixen under the veil. On AdFreak she's called an "exotic hottie."

In addition, some Muslims (or likewise modest people) would certainly be offended by the ad since the model appears bare-bottomed, briefly.

We don't know much about the woman in the commercial; she could live in anywhere. But since there is a campaign to lift the ban on women selling lingerie in Saudi Arabia, the commercial actually addresses a genuine issue (even if it wasn't intentional). But will viewers get that? Or do they just see an "exotic hottie" in a stylish undies ad?

Social Statement Via Unmentionables Ad [Animal]
Lingerie That Goes With Practically Any Outfit [AdFreak]

Earlier: Saudi Women Trained To Sell Underwear
Boy-Cott: Male Lingerie Salesmen Not Helping Modesty, Say Saudi Women

Our story begins behind a fence. You see, pop stars have to build up walls, to keep out the world — fame is a cage, really. These three hardened, sharpened points represent the past, present, and the future.

You may think this statue means the car has arrived at a polo club. But the horse is a symbol of the yearning to be free. Native Americans equated horses with spirit winds and messengers. Horses also stand for strength and hard work. Hello? Britney works hard for the money, so you better treat her right!

Product placement.

Our heroine emerges. No one greets her.

The choice to shoot Britney framed by the crotch of a horse is to remind us that she is a mere human, a small person on a large planet; fragile. Also: Thin, now.

Product placement.

Our heroine has magically changed clothes. She descends a staircase — goes down the rabbit hole, if you will, deep into her subconscious. There's a light on. And a package with some balls. You do the math.

She peeks around the corner.

A man is finishing getting dressed, which means we — er — she just missed him bare-chested. Damn.

Like many men who exist only in one's subconscious, he remains faceless. Also, there are no razors in the subconscious.

Suddenly, the man is astride a muscular steed, brandishing a polo mallet. Note the number 3 — the most mystical number. Three is the first odd prime number, and there are three types of molecular bonds. There were three witches in Macbeth; Adolf Hitler's Empire was the 3rd Reich; shamrocks have three leaves; three little bears, three billy goats gruff, you always get three wishes and there's a Christian Holy Trinity. Britney Spears is only female artist in music history to have her first three albums debut at number one. She married her first husband, Jason Alexander, on January 3. She got engaged to Kevin Federline three months after they met. The book Britney wrote with her mom, Britney Spears's Heart to Heart, was printed by Three Rivers Press.

Shakespeare often made puns about riding — meaning sex. Some believe that when a young woman gets really into horseback riding, she is channeling her sexual urges.

In any case, Britney has changed her ensemble again, so she can watch the action. Note how she wears all black, to signify how deep and dark she is; the white room reminds you: None of this is really happening.

She looks out on the cold, isolated landscape to find her Faceless Man; and the sexy freedom of him straddling a horse. Somehow you can tell that she thinks he holds all the answers, all the keys to the mysteries she can't solve.

But he's just playing with his balls.

It's disappointing, to say the least. This is her subconscious fantasy, dammit!

Product placement.

Product placement. And proof of empty uterus: At least she didn't have unprotected sex with the guy. Also: Thin!

…And: Scene.

First off, I was stunned by the production values of this commercial. Maybe I'm jaded due to the relatively poor production values of most of the McCain commercials these days — can they have more minor-key music, scary voiceovers and sepia tones? — but these were not digital video productions, these were filmed, as far as I could tell. The physical transitions were good, the narrative structure was sound and despite my personal inability to listen to long speeches without distraction, I was actually counting the minutes while thinking to myself, "That much time has passed already?" This was not thrown together on a small budget, and this was no Lifetime roundtable with women on a soundstage (as Clinton's primary ad buy was) or Ross Perot's mug on screen yapping at me for thirty minutes about the number of chickens on Arkansas. This was really well done.

When the speech ended and Keith Olbermann said that Obama's buy on the 7 networks cost him about $5 million dollars, I thought two things: first, that the commercial itself had to cost between $500,000 and $1 million to make; and second, that the sheer amount of earned media that he was going to get out of it was easily going to match that. It's practically the functional equivalent of getting a Bat-signal and projecting a logo on the moon — maybe you don't look at the moon that night, but, damn, are you gonna hear about it tomorrow.

Other things I noticed: Obama shared the screen with a who's-who of prominent Dems in swing states, from Ohio Governor Ted Strickland to Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill to New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Virginia Governor Tim Kaine. He hit up teachers, unionized factory workers, and retirees stuck working at Wal-Mart in his "real Americans" vignettes and managed to talk about all the major areas of domestic policy disagreement with John McCain without anyone really noticing that he all but ignored social issues that tend to divide Americans. This wasn't a pitch to Democrats but an effort to convince the truly undecided voters to vote for him, particularly the undecided voters in swing states.

And, fine, the whole thing was deliberately intended to tug at our heartstrings while not being too sugar-y sweet to turn off the men among us. And, I'll be damned if the Obama campaign's female focus group members didn't bust out weeping in their sessions. I'll admit, between some raging hormones and some recent family tragedy, the little old lady with arthritis in her hands and Obama's comment that his mother's death from cancer "felt arbitrary" choked me the hell up. I don't have to call to know my mom probably teared up more than a little. Whatever, I also cry when the Beast dies in Beauty and the Beast, at the end of Ghost and during the funeral scene in Steel Magnolias. I'm a complete sap when it comes to grief and death.

On policy stuff, I mostly thought that it was the same talking points from the debate, highlighted by the text to the right of the screen: tax cuts; spending cuts; foreclosure moratorium; withdrawing from Iraq; keep your health insurance if you like it. But, then, I have been paying attention to this stuff obsessively for months, so it wasn't new information for me. It helped to highlight those parts of his economic plans that have been distorted recently by the McCain campaign and counter charges that he was all style and no substance, so I appreciate that it was necessary and I thought the narrative transitions were managed well enough for it not to seem jarring or disjointed.

Anyway, those were my thoughts. What were yours?

Deciding how far to push the obvious reference to male genitalia must have been tricky. The spot wavers on both sides of the line—and I think that works very well.

Milk Cast Its Spell On Evil PMS-ing Witches [AdFreak]
California Milk Processor Board | "Bruja" [You Tube]

Retro Dirtiness: Asics Sells Running Shoes With Crotch Shots [TV In Japan]