some more even-keeled thoughts on the hornitos tequila commercial (which i still find repugnant and dangerous to women)

So, my post on the Hornitos tequila commercial that glamorizes questionably consensual and definitely predatory sex, uh, blew up a bit more than I thought it would yesterday. Page views went kaboom. People shared lots of really great thoughts about the nature of consent. Lots of people wrote letters to the company to complain about the ad. (Awesome! Keep doing that!)

That said. I saw a problem with the ad, and I wanted people to talk about the ad, to retweet it, to post about it on their own blogs — basically, to get a link to the commercial and a means to contact the company in front of as many eyes as possible. In order to do that, my original post took a tone that was wildly vitriolic, quite unsubtle, and maybe a little bit flippant. Is there a place for phrases like “get your rape on” in the quest to get a post retweeted? Yup. Totally. Can it capture nuanced thoughts about the way an advertisement can contribute to rape culture? No, of course not.

Hornitos “Brotherly Love” thirty-second spot.

Attractive actors. Great production value. Absolutely morally  repugnant. Here’s what’s bugging me:

Everything about the ad, right down to the title, suggests that the major ethical violation here is that Skeezy Dave is scamming on Airport Mike’s girlfriend, as a violation of Bro Code. And while I think we can agree that snaking a friend or brother’s girl is an uncool thing to do, as long as the cuckolding is engaged in willfully by both the cheating partner and the non-stellar bro, it’s just garden variety cheating. Sibling rivalry! Wacky hijinks! Monogamy-more-like-monotony-amirite? Not great behavior, but you’re not exactly drop-kicking kittens here.

However, because the narrative of the commercial is so much filtered through the brothers’ perspective, it’s easy to miss that this is not an average cuckold situation, because the woman is not willingly cheating on her boyfriend. He has impersonated his brother to make her think she is having sex with her boyfriend, when in fact she’ll be having sex with someone whom she would not otherwise consent to have sex with.

In a court of law, apparently Skeezy Dave wouldn’t be serving any jail time for this (unless, of course, she noticed mid-coitus, asked him to stop and he continued — ugh, Skeezy Dave, please don’t do that). It is not technically, legally rape. However, the commercial does make a mockery of her right to choose whom she does and does not have sex with.

If this isn’t rape, then it is, at least, violation on a large scale. He is violating her trust and her right to choose her sexual partners. In the future, when she inevitably finds out what has been done to her (“Honey, I’m home!” “Um, yeah, you’re in bed wi—-oh.”), she will realize that she has been deceived and misled into having sex with a partner who was not of her own choosing. It’s hard to imagine that, in that situation, a woman wouldn’t feel that her body had been violated. The situation we are watching unfold will be traumatic to her on so many levels.

To me, though, one of the most insidious aspects of this commercial is that so many people miss this fact on their first, third, fifth, twentieth watches. Because she is a bit player to the brothers’ drama — little more than a smoky-voiced, writhing prop — it’s easy to laugh at the dramatic irony of a brother snakin’ his twin’s girlfriend, and miss that she has no say in taking part in the cheating. Her decision has been made for her by sketchy twin’s decision to deceive her about his identity.

When we are not seeing — or, heck, when we’re downright glamorizing — women being deceived and manipulated into sex with people they do not wish to sleep with, we’ve got a problem.

If you stop and evaluate it, this is very clearly a story of sexual predation. But because everyone in the commercial is so good-looking, and sitcoms have taught us that twin-switches are zany fun, and because the drama at the forefront — scammin’ on your brother’s girl — is relatively harmless and told amusingly here, it’s easy to watch this and miss the tone of predation. This concerns me. Greatly.

Sexism in liquor ads is nothing new. Neither is the concept that women are prizes to be won, or even — disgustingly — that the booze these commercials are selling might lower a woman’s inhibitions to the point that she agrees to sleep with you. These things sicken me, personally, because I think they perpetuate a demeaning, derogatory view of women. But as saddened as I am by the mindset behind this kind of advertising, I’m not rushing around saying it should be taken off the air. The female characters in those ads might be portrayed as porn-star fantasies with questionable taste in men, but these are choices they are making.

Where this particular commercial crosses the line for me is in its tacit endorsement of actively deceiving women into having sex with you, when it is obvious they would not willingly give their consent. The commercial glamorizes our resident skeezester for being so clever as to take advantage of the situation. He is so focused on his sexual conquest that he does not realize he is railroading her right to choose her sexual partners, and causing untold psychological damage. She’s hot and the tequila’s cold, the commercial says, so why should he care? And why should we?

We need to care about women’s rights to make their own decisions about their bodies. There are people inside of those bodies. (Yes, even the hot ones.) And the first order of treating them like actual human beings is making sure that all sexual contact is unquestionably consensual. The glamorization of sexual predation in this ad perpetuates exactly the kind of no-consequence, this-is-mine-for-the-taking mentality that leads to sexual assault and, yes, capital-R rape.

I believe, when it comes to consent, that yes means yes. And a big part of that is realizing when we should say no. Violations of trust, fraudulent and deceitful seduction, manipulation and coercion — this is what we need to say no to. This is me saying no. Fuck no. And I hope, even if you missed it the first time you saw the ad, you can look at a situation like this and say “fuck no” too. (In fact, say it to Hornitos, while you’re at it!)

Tagged as: as of tomorrow i'm done being a feminist blogger and will finally run my dumb jeopardy post, hornitos, i'm still all for mailing them boxes of used tampons. just sayin'., in which i do not bandy about the word rape, or maybe i'll run a post about rogaine. so hard to say., see wasn't this significantly less fun to read than my vitriolic post?