You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

The Product:
A “dating” service.

The Promotion:

The Pitch:
We’ll hook you up with a nice slave … -ic woman. A Slavic woman. Yes, that’s what we meant.

Yikes.

I’ve covered some sketchy ads here before. The Flintstones hocking cigarettes. Ashley Madison telling people “Have an affair”. Groupon exploiting the suffering of the Tibetan people. Just everything about that Love’s Baby Soft ad.

But this … this is a new low. This is the first time I’ve had to go, “Jesus, have I stumbled on the front for a human trafficking operation?” I mean, watch this thing and tell me it doesn’t sound like there’s a guy just off-screen, holding a gun, making that woman recite those words off a cue card.

And even if we’re generous and assume this ad isn’t part of a criminal enterprise (or an FBI plant trying to bust a criminal enterprise) … it’s still fucked up as all holy heck!

Like, I can’t tell if it’s playing up a bunch of stereotypes of Slavic women, or if it’s inventing a bunch of new stereotypes to make them sound sexier, but either way it’s pretty darn racist.

Then there’s the way it talks about women. It’d be problematic enough if it was simply trying to pair young immigrant women with older, wealthier American men. And it’d be skeezy enough that it focuses primarily on the women’s bodies and how they can fulfill “traditional” roles for men. But when they have lines referring to the women as “an object … of fascination” and telling the men “take what is yours” …

I’m gonna need a shower after this one. So long everybody.