A recent Jezebel article looks at how fast food restaurant Carl’s Jr. combines of sex and hamburgers to draw in customers. Some (like the one featuring Paris Hilton) give no more than a few seconds to featuring the hamburger and are so over the top that they almost seem like a parody. They all rely heavily on the male gaze to titillate their audience and make the consumption of a burger into an explicitly sexual experience. The ad featuring Kate Upton is probably the most repulsive.
Many of the women in the ads have successful careers (a new ad coming soon features Heidi Klum). These ads are so blatant in their objectification of women that I can’t see anyone agreeing to appear in them. Even Padma Lakshmi, the award-winning host of Top Chef and author whose fame ostensibly comes from having a palate more distinguishing than your typical Carl’s Jr. enthusiast, agreed to pull up her dress while telling a sexually encoded narrative about hamburgers and licking sauce off herself.
Carl’s Jr. boasts the slogan “More than just a piece of meat” and at this point I’m convinced that this refers only to their hamburgers because it is certainly not how they treat their spokeswomen.
joyceh93 