I asked my daughter to comment on the ad.
Some background: this daughter traveled to rural India when she was 18 and spent a 10 months there. Two of those months were spent traveling through all of India (bus, train, jeep and camel - well for two hours anyway on the camel). She saw first hand the plight of the less fortunate, especially women in the lower castes. That changed her world view dramatically. When she returned to Canada, she changed her area of study from Music to Equity and Gender Studies. So she is now immersed in what many consider a left wing ideology at the University of Toronto. You can imagine the discussions we have when we get together. Nevertheless, she had caused me to reflect on my values, beliefs and she has challenged my traditional views on male/female relationships. And for that, I thank her. While we may disagree on many things, I value her perspective on issues such as the reasons that prompted Queen to start a petition.
Here are her thoughts that she dispatched in an e-mail to me. Based on the grammar and sentence structure, I think she wrote this rapidly off the top of her head. Some sentences do not flow or make complete sense. But overall, I think you can get the gist of her argument.
This is a problematic ad I think. It's doing a number of things
1. It's basically suggesting that if you buy her a drink and get her drunk she won't be able to say "no", thus making a sexual encounter that may not have 100% consent for the female party - which is date rape. Many people believe that it's only non consensual when someone says "No" and even then, people still believe that "no" means "yes". I came across a rapist confidential once and a lot of these people didn't even know they were raping at the time.
2. Then there's the use of "friendzone", a term that perpetuates sexism. The use of it in the ad makes it so that the "Nice Guy who always finishes last" and always finds himself in the friendzone has an excuse to have potentially non consensual sex. Like, since it's him, the "Nice Guy" getting her drunk so she can't really give honest consent it can't be rape. Because - a Nice Guy would never rape someone. That's just impossible. So the ad perpetuates that "nice guys don't rape", and I assure you, they can.
3. Plus, any time the "friendzone" is uttered, it's perpetuating the idea that females should feel obligated to have sex with a male who is nice to her. Plus, devalues any sort of male-female platonic relationship.
Not a good ad, but most alcohol ads are almost the worst to perpetuate extremely harmful sexism.
whether you agree or disagree with her perspective, I thinks she attempts to explain a situation that many of us (men and women) do not see as harmful or demeaning to women. Without being overly politically correct, perhaps we should be doing some navel gazing when it comes to gender studies.
I think Angostura recognized this and acted appropriately by pulling the ad.