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.
logrey: So sorry you got hit by that.
One of the things that feeds the FZ myth is the notion that girls ‘like jerks’. This, of course, is false. But it’s easy to convince yourself of this if you’re the guy who befriends women with the expectation of romance/sex later on. Why? Because teens and young adults tend to have turbulent relationships. And when you’re on an emotional roller-coaster, you talk to a friend.
So if your female friends (whom you secretly are hoping will someday realize how great you are) are going through a rough patch, you get the call where they are looking for support. This generates a false view of the relationship, because you’re literally getting a front-row to the worst parts, while the things that are going well mostly happen out of your view. So the guy ends up believing that his female friends are all dating near-abusive jerks, and then opts to go “I guess it’s true, Nice Guys finish last!” without any of the self-awareness necessary to realize that being in a friendship under false pretenses is, frankly, about as ‘not-nice’ as you can get without being abusive. (I won’t even get into the guys who actively try to sabotage their female friends’ relationships so that they will be left alone. XKCD did a perfect take-down of those scumbags and how it turns out when they actually succeed at their manipulative bullshit.)
Shared this with my son. We are all jaw dropped ‘wtf’.
And yes, absolutely meant to be evocative of Blurred Lines.
@Fruitloopsie
The profile was female presenting, but who knows what the reasoning was behind that one.
I cant tell if these guys are trying to generate controversy or actually just really stupid. WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS OKAY!
On the subject of the “friendzone” I find to be one of the dumbest concepts people have ever thought up. Personally I think that while alot of the blame lies in male privilege and entitlement it also lies in the fact that growing up so many parents and teachers dont let there children play with children of different sexes. Hell even the toys and advertising subtly encourages this with “boys toys” and “girls toys”. This leads to men thinking that the only connection they can have with a women is a romantic one. Know that I think about it so few tv shows, or movies show any platonic friendships between men and women that dont actually lead up to them dating.
Ick! Bloomingdale’s, why do you risk ruining your brand with this?!
I was once friend zoned by a guy. We always had a great time together and laughed a lot. When he friend zoned me, it was fine. I still got to hang out with him and have fun. Then he got a girlfriend and dumped me. That hurt.
I was stunned to discover years later that he was a secret misogynist and male power monger. Then I had to admit to myself that he had dropped little hints. Live and learn!
Yes @delphi – I do know what surreptitious means. It can mean unauthorised, but it can also mean sneaky, secret or furtive. I’m not a big fan of word pedants and I’m really not a fan of unnecessary belittling.
I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard/seen the phrase “spiking a drink” used in the context of date rape or roofies. So I can easily believe that the people who wrote it or are defending it have never seen it used that way either. I’ve only seen it used to refer to adding alcohol to a punch bowl or eggnog bowl. Which is still not a good thing to do, but is not usually intentionally harming anyone.
OTOH, that picture is creepy. Makes me think the guy who chose the picture was thinking about roofies and rape. And if he was, could be that the whole thing was designed to cause controversy.
Well, whether or not it was intentional, it’s still not OK.
I was friend-zoned, and that was when I wasn’t rejected outright. Seems like some people take rejection so personally. It’s not the end of the world or a negative commentary on my existence if someone rejects me. I always go at things with “the worst thing that can happen is they say no”, and so what? Just because I may want something doesn’t mean that I am entitled to it, or it’s owed to me.
But, then again, I am a woman. Not an entitled man baby.
As an aside, “nice” is not a personality trait. Being good, being decent, those are personality traits. “Nice” is a manipulation, at least the “nice” that these “nice guys” project. Anyone that has the attitude that “I am so nice, but I can’t get laid by hot girls that owe me sex, what is wrong with those uppity bitches” may appear outwardly nice, but they are not decent, good guys. Thanks, Gavin deBecker for teaching me that.
@Freemage
This generates a false view of the relationship, because you’re literally getting a front-row to the worst parts, while the things that are going well mostly happen out of your view.
This sounds similar to survivorship bias. “Reverse survivorship” bias perhaps? Because you’re only seeing the failures rather than the successes instead of the other way around? But either way, you’re making judgments based on what you know, while failing to consider that the things you *don’t* know are of greater importance.
I’m not impressed with “Word Crimes” tbh.
–It’s time to stop complaining about people using “literal” as an intensifier. Literally every word that means “literally” is used as an intensifier. Consider “actually,” “really,” “truly,” “very,” and perhaps “seriously.”
–I say “couldn’t care less,” other people say “could care less,” and people who either can explain why they do it. Both are acceptable and standard.
–Dangling participles are occasionally hilarious but frequently expedient.
–“Whom” has been dying ever since we standard ending on participles. “To whom” sounds better than “to who,” but “who … to” sounds better than “whom … to.”
–By threatening “literal” violence, Weird Al makes himself either a monster or a hypocrite.
–Some people literally can’t out of bed. Even if it looks like they can.
–People who aren’t proficient in Standard English probably weren’t “raised in sewers,” generally have no trouble refraining from drooling on themselves, are not as a rule unqualified to raise children, and almost never deserve a crowbar upside the head.
*When I wrote “ending on participles,” I meant “ending on prepositions.”
Also on the word crimes video, consider that much of what we consider to be “proper English grammar” was invented during the 1600s by rabid Latin fanboys who insisted that all languages should work as much like Latin as possible. Meanwhile most people ignore a lot of those rules unless they’re trying to sound “professional” because it’s not how everyday English has ever been spoken.
I hate, hate, hate that concept of the “friendzone”. I went from an all-male Catholic secondary school to a 90% male university discipline (engineering) and work in a male-dominated industry (IT): my women friends are few and far between. The idea that friendship is some kind of consolation prize needs to fucking die.
“Could care less” is never acceptable. It “literally” makes zero sense in that context.
I do agree about “whom” though. The word is basically dead. Get over it.
I used to love the word “nice” it was cute but now the creeps have tarnished the word so much people are now using it as a slur. Whenever “nice guys” pop up in comments people would go “You forgot your fedora!” Poor fedoras 🙁 I really like fedoras I have a collection of them. #NotAllFedoras #SaveTheFedora
Not to worry, Fruitloopsie! The self-proclaimed Nice Guys all wear trilbys, and not actual fedoras!
Yes, it sounds like a related cognitive bias. And of course, once you make the initial ‘deduction’ of “Hot girls all like the bad boys”, you then toss in a heap of confirmation bias.
Full disclosure: While I never went anywhere near the level of MGTOW/MRA, I was quite duped by this particular thought-trap in my own adolescence. It probably stunted my romantic development by about 5-10 years, frankly. It’s very tempting in a lot of ways, not the least of which is the fact that it exculpates the guy for any part in his own relationship issues. So I’m a bit sympathetic, in the case of guys who don’t go full asshole about it all. (I can legitimately say that I never did–on those times when I did suggest I’d like a different relationship and was shot down, I remained friends with the girl, without expectation of a change in mind on her part.)
@Fruitloopsie
The hat itself is innocent. It’s the douchebag *under* the hat we gotta watch out for. *wry grin*
Got a teal dear here, because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this concept.
IMO, the inherent notion of the ‘friendzone’ in a vacuum is totally fine and not at all problematic. It really just means ‘this person for whom I feel romantic feelings towards only feels platonic feelings towards me’ or a way to reject someone’s romantic intentions without rejection that person in their entirety (or a soft rejection, where it’s clear no friendship will sustain). It’s a phenomenon experienced by pretty much anyone who has ever tried to date another human being.
For a while, I actually had no problem using the term. As in ‘Damn, I got friendzoned. Oh well! Time to move on’ or ‘damn it, I think she likes me, but I really only see her as a friend. I’m gonna have to friendzoning her’. I’ve been on both sides and I’ve never assigned a ‘gender role’ to either side
But then you add the cultural context of sexism, male entitlement and suddenly ‘friendzoning’ is presented as some sort of ‘offense’ that women specifically commit to men specifically (because of course, it’s totally fine for a man to reject a woman, but a woman to reject a man? unacceptable!). Lamenting the friendzone and resenting the person who did the ‘friendzoning’ is considered a-OK and that’s kind of shocking to me. I’ve stopped using the term after I saw how often it is problematically used and the very sexist context that it is used in.
Then add to it the myth that “women are attracted to assholes” that @freemage was talking about suddenly the friendzone reads like feedback of “I was too nice, I wasn’t enough of an asshole” instead of “she doesn’t feel that way about me, I need to move on”.
This also relates a lot to one of the most dangerous myths that’s still very much present in society.
“If I do XYZ, this will cause women to like me” or, the idea that men ultimately control how a woman feels about them.
i.e. Women have no agency over their attraction, it is entirely determined by what the man does. Which inevitably leads to men believing that had they done things differently, they would be with this person. Which leads men who have been rejected to harass or stalk the woman who did the rejecting in the hopes of ‘changing her mind’ because. Believing that they just need to input a special series of commands to unlock her affection.
This myth is the root of so many sexist behaviors we see on this blog. Red Pill assholes believing that only a small population of ‘alphas’ are doing all the sexing, because in their mind “I was rejected romantically, so I must not have the skills that these mysterious alphas have”.
I remember when I use to buy into this myth. Anytime I failed to attract someone, the takeaway was always “Damn, I must of screwed up somewhere because she ended up not liking me, what am I doing wrong?”. Looking back on it now, I’m scared that I could think something like that and very glad that I now understand the sexist connotations behind such a thought.
I still remember the (now cringeworthy) advice of “dude, you totally could have gotten laid if you had just done XYZ”. Rejection, although painful, is NOT a ‘screw-up’ and should NEVER be presented as such.
Yet there are still movies that have the (of course) male hero becoming a better person and that is what causes the token love interest to fall in love with him. Said token love interest has no feelings of her own, she’s just a reward for him becoming a better person.
Naturally, misogynists see these movies or commercials and conclude that it clearly proves all women are ‘shallow’, ‘incapable of love’, ‘hypergamous’ and ‘must be treated like children’. Ugh.
PS: The movie “Waiting” has an excellent breakdown of the “why are women only attracted to assholes” myth, where all the waitresses explain to the extremely socially awkward dude that it’s basically a load of shit, and the reason why he can’t get a date is due to his own insecurities which create self-fulfilling prophecies, not because he’s a “Nice GuyTM”.
Thanks for the hugs, Fruitloopsie. 🙂
@ Freemage, the two long-term relationships I’ve had in my life, have both actually been abusive jerks, but it’s not because I liked jerks, but more that I didn’t realize they were jerks. I’m not dumb, but I come from an abusive background, so it was normal to me.
And I’ve seen a few men fall hopelessly in love with female jerks too. I think it’s more traumatic bonding or some other unconscious thing than that you actually prefer jerks.
Moocow:
I like it when you tl;dr. You have a way of laying things our in an easy to understand order. I have issues with the order of things. I understand most things, but explaining/talking about some things is difficult if I don’t have the order down.
Paradoxical Intention
“Not to worry, Fruitloopsie! The self-proclaimed Nice Guys all wear trilbys, and not actual fedoras!”
…#SaveAllTheHats!
Bananananana dakry
“The hat itself is innocent. It’s the douchebag *under* the hat we gotta watch out for. *wry grin*”
I know but still poor hats
Hurray for everyone who came out of toxic thinking!
Iogrey
Yeah that is one of the 3 reasons why women/girls stay in abusive relationships
1) they have a abusive background
2) they thought the guys they’re with were good people but found out they’re abusive and can’t get out
Or 3) they’re abusive themselves
Hugs for everyone who have been in abusive relationships/has an abusive background.
@raysa
Thanks, that’s really encouraging to hear 🙂
Moocow kinda ninja’d me, but here goes. I think the “friend zone” i actually a useful idea. Nice Guys go wrong because they resent the friend zone and/or think they can fight it. There are also PUA-type misconceptions that hold that there’s a special window right when you meet someone in which you can avoid the friend zone, which is mostly wrong. But as for the friend zone itself?
When I first heard about the “friend zone” around age 15, it was kind of a revelation. It was the clearest explanation I’d seen of the that human relationshhips/intimacy are not one-dimensional; that there not a continuum from “stranger” to “lover” on which “friend” lies in the middle.
I had grown up on a lot of fiction that used the “first girl wins” trope, where the protagonist ends up with someone they had known for a long time but not thought of as a romantic prospect. I read a lot of fiction about abuse survivors, who weren’t receptive to any thought of romance until after a long, platonic process of building trust. I had only just become interested in girls, and I was dating a girl I’d been friends with before dating was on the horizon. Basically, everything in my life had led me to think of sex and romance as something that develops out of a prior nonsexual intimacy.
So when I heard about the “friend zone,” it was the first time I understood that it didn’t necessarily work the same for adults, or people who were more allosexual than me, or whatever. The idea that people who were attracted to me would generally notice almost immediately, and people who weren’t attracted to me at first probably never would be, was a useful thing for me to hear.
Logrey:
I have been married to my current husband for over a decade, and he is a great person. My first marriage lasted only a few months, and he was horribly abusive.
We dated for about 6 months, and he wanted to get married. I didn’t really care about marriage, but I liked him, he was a lot of fun, and he basically said that he wanted to get married, that if I didn’t want to marry him, I had had enough time to know, and he would move on to find someone that wanted the same thing he did. Made sense to me.
What was actually happening was that the nice guy facade he had been putting on to trick me was becoming harder for him to keep up. I didn’t figure it out soon enough, and, once you are legally married, it’s incredibly hard to get out.
They never start out as jerks. They just cover it up until you can’t get away.