If you haven’t already seen this on Twitter, here’s something terrible for you: the image above comes from a catalog for Bloomingdale’s.
Because, apparently, a group of actual human beings sat around a table trying to come up with new ways to sell clothes this holiday season and decided that, really, there was no better way to do that than by conjuring up visions of holiday-themed date rape.
The ad copy is bad enough, but the picture really clinches the ad’s full terribleness: the happy woman, enjoying herself obliviously at some holiday party while her predatory “best friend” contemplates the best way to render her unconscious.
Happily, enough people were publicly disgusted by the ad and its creepy implications that Bloomingdale’s has now apologized for it, though somehow I doubt they will feel apologetic enough to rerelease their catalog with the offending image removed from it.
To me, one of the creepiest things about the ad was its implicit invocation of the notion of the “friend zone,” that mythic land where poor suffering men are exiled by cruel women who just can’t see that the best guy for them is already sitting by their side listening patiently as they cry about the latest bad boy to break their heart. You know this stale old story by heart.
The idea of the “friend zone” turns a woman’s lack of romantic interest in a guy into a sort of injustice that she has supposedly inflicted upon him. It encourages a seemingly contradictory sense of wounded, hopeless entitlement amongst guys who would do far better if they either accepted the friendship of their crush for what it is, or, if this is too painful for them, just moved on.
Guys who see themselves as being trapped in the friend zone feel they are being denied something — well, someone — that should rightfully be theirs. After all, they’re such nice fellows, the best friend a woman could ever have!
But really not.
Needless to say, a “best friend” staring at a woman and thinking about ways to spike her drink is not a friend at all. Neither, really, is any guy — well, anyone of any gender — who considers themselves stuck in the friend zone, which is not actually a zone of friends at all; it’s a zone full of thwarted, passive-aggressive clingers-on who think the fact that they’re your friend(and not something more) is a terrible crime against them. And that’s just as creepy as this Bloomingdale’s ad.
“surreptitiously spiked my drinks… with my complete knowledge and consent”
Vile! Yes my first thought was date rape – especially given the image. Silly woman, laughing happily while supposing your “best friend” has totally got your back and would never do anything to harm you!
My second thought was of someone I knew whose friends spiked his drink with psychoactive drugs. He had a terrifying time, was convinced he was going mad, suffered badly from flashbacks and has since made several suicide attempts, self harmed and has generally found it hard to get over. It screwed up his last year of school, too, so he didn’t get to university as expected.
His friends thought it was very funny at the time, but one of them – only one – admitted what they’d done a couple of years after the event.
So, yeah, if Bloomingdales was somewhere I’d ever shopped (I don’t think it exists in the UK) I would now be boycotting it.
I’m suspecting rugbyyogi means the friend was spiking her drinks with her knowledge, but without anyone else present realizing. Also, possibly, that rubyyogi knew the drink was going to be spiked (and had given consent for this to happen), but had left the issues of timing and potency up to the friend.
Thanks for posting this, Dave. The whole “friend zone” thing is one of my pet peeves.
If you are attracted to another person and they don’t reciprocate, you can either form a supportive friendship, or you can move on. If you stick around hoping they’ll change their mind you’re fooling nobody but yourself, and you’re treating them not as a person, but as an object.
When I was in my 20s, I was madly in love with a woman who didn’t find me physically attractive. I knew she never would, and that’s OK – we became best friends, she was someone I could talk to about anything. If I’d kept “hoping”, our friendship never would have become as strong as it did, and I would have missed out on the closest friendship I’ve ever had.
My colleague sent me this a while back:
and I thought it was really catchy–I think it was months before I discovered that it was actually a real song.
You know, instead of people protesting against Starbucks for their “minimalist Christmas” cups, we should be protesting against companies like these.
Even without the rapey slogan, that picture strikes me as creepy. Dude staring flatly at a woman who seems to be unaware of him? Blargh.
Yuck. Watch out for these people, David. You have every right to defend your reputation, but they have an unlimited ability to waste your time. Know that all the people who matter understand that you’re in the right, and don’t let them force a long, aggravating public dispute.
To add to all the other Wrongs of this, some people (ahem) have medical conditions that make even a little alcohol very painful. These people would be lucky to have real friends who support them NOT drinking.
Also, on the “FZ”: I have several female friends who I was initially attracted to. When they rejected me romantically, I got the fuck over it and enjoyed the friendship. Romance is not really “something more”, friendship is more than good enough.
Alternate Bloomingdales slogans:
“Put razor blades in the Halloween candy!”
“Turn the gas on before they light the birthday candles!”
“Put vipers in the petting zoo!”
“Put psychoactive drugs in Gotham’s water supply!”
Doesn’t this match certiorari thematic elements of the conception of Jesus?
Karl, I wish that I had had the maturity you demonstrated there in my early 20s 🙂 In university I was – I promise – told by one girl that I was ‘too nice’ to be a boyfriend, which kind of stung… I hadn’t realized at the time that it was her way of trying to let me down nicely, or that women even had to let men down nicely for fear of them becoming creepy stalkers.
guest, Word Crimes makes something good out of an awful song – although I was shocked by the use of the word “spastic” in the middle of it, which in the UK and some other parts of the world is a MASSIVELY offensive term for people who are mentally disabled. Apparently Weird Al didn’t know this and he apologized on his Twitter for it – which is so much more than the idiot Thicke did for deliberately writing an entire song about raping people.
That should be “certain” not “certiorari”
@davidknewton
“Spastic”, like “retarded”, is an offensive term in the U.S. as well. I think it only differs in the degree of offense.
Sorry for the double post.
This is why I stopped having straight male friends long ago. I like men as friends, but the same thing kept happening over and over. At a time when I was most vulnerable and most needed a friend, that’s the time they would make a move, and in a way that clearly illustrated that getting me to have sex with them was the whole point of being my friend in the first place. A couple of times it was really crushing because they were guys who I felt very close to emotionally. One of them was much older, and I had considered setting him up with my mom, so I thought of him as a sort of father figure which made me feel totally icky.
Sometimes you really can’t win because if you’re nice and friendly, a lot of guys assume you want to sleep with them, but if you’re cold and aloof, then you’re a stuck-up bitch who thinks she’s better than. It’s a fine line that I have a hard time with even still.
I was in a few gas stations and saw these little metal signs and they were so jaw dropping awful, one I read was: “let’s play a game keep drinking until you sleep with me” WTF!?
Kupo
“If I had a male best friend that spiked my eggnog behind my back… I would thank him. Yes yes, I know, makes me an awful person.”
Not sure if it’s a rapist pretending to be a woman or a man unknownly stated one of his male privileges (that being not terrified of being raped and being blamed. Not saying men don’t get raped but they don’t constantly hear how not to get raped and blamed for it)
I was rejected but I didn’t become bitter I was like “meh oh well” it’s ok to be sad but when people are complaining about the “friendzone” then they’re not good friends because if being with that person is more important than that person her/himself then you shouldn’t have any friends especially a romantic relationship at all.
Are all my friends in the friendzone?
Iogrey
I’m so sorry that happened to you what a bunch of a-holes. hugs if you want them and hugs to all who had similar situations.
#wordcrimes is my new favorite thing, thank you for that 🙂
🙂 oh good! I’m glad there was at least one person who saw my comment who hadn’t heard it yet. The tune IS really catchy, I’m glad I have some non-horrible words to sing to it.
Once upon a time I was rejected by a girl I really liked. I saw it very much as a “friendzoning.” It was unpleasant, and I reacted badly.
I was also 13. I got the fuck over it. And by “it” I mean the whole stupid fucking concept.
Yep. As a teen I felt I was “friendzoned” by a couple of young women I was interested in. Why couldn’t they see how wonderful I was? Why did they continue to date jerks that didn’t deserve them? What was wrong with women? The injustice!
Then, a few times in college I became friends with women that I liked, but either wasn’t attracted to, or didn’t want a romantic relationship with, and it became clear that they were interested in me and were just sort of hanging on and hoping. It was awkward. And I finally realized: oh, this is what it’s like from the other side. And I realized what a jerk I’d been in highschool (not that I’d done anything particularly inappropriate, just been sort of clingy.) Ironically, the young women I’d “friendzoned” were usually a lot “nicer” than women I was actually interested in.
A big part of the friendzone myth is that it is specifically something done by women to men. Once you realize that non-reciprocated affection is just part of human relationships and that you can understand the other party on a general level, the narrative loses its force.
@lkeke35 – Oh I totally agree that it’s too egregious to be an accident; I just wanted to point out that even if we decide against all reason to accept whatever mealy-mouthed excuse gets posited, *at best* it means that the ads are thoughtlessly irresponsible, which still deserves a calling out.