Ad in today’s Irish Independent
‘the latest Diageo/Role-models advertisement features a young woman returned home after a night out clearly upset, with her mother standing in the bedroom doorway. The tag line read: ‘Who’s following in your footsteps: Out-of-control-drinking has consequences.’
The sinister inference is that the young girl has been attacked on her way home. The message is it’s her fault for being drunk and what is more it is also her mother’s fault for her own drinking habits.
The belief that drunk girls are ‘asking for it’ is one that needs to be strongly challenged as it is one that we know perpetrators use to select and target their victims knowing this cultural attitude will mean they get away with it. Disappointingly, the out-of-control campaign instead of challenging it has reinforced it here…
‘Not only is the survivor blamed, the survivors’ mother is also in the frame. The perpetrator is not in this picture. This is a harmful, regressive and hurtful message which targets the vulnerable. Survivors of sexual violence should never be used in this manner.
Clíona Saidléar, director Rape Crisis Network
Thanks Sue Redmond
Update:
“The ad in today’s Irish Independent is part of a series of ads that are designed to get a discussion going in Ireland about the consequences of out-of-control drinking – the consequences for children, for siblings, and for our ourselves. The ads are designed to say, amongst other things, that our behaviour influences those around us. The ad in today’s Independent depicts an older sister who has returned home after a night of clearly excessive drinking, who is being watched by her younger sister.
This image may be provocative, and is intended to be. It has however been wildly misunderstood and misinterpreted by the Director of the Rape Crisis Network, who has madea series of completely inaccurate claims about the content of the ad. Nobody associated with this campaign would tolerate for a minute the inference that victims of sexual assault are ever to blame. Many of us have worked with the victims of abuse and assault over many years, and would never allow any untrue inference of that kind. It is an entirely unworthy assertion, based on a misinterpretation.”
Statement from Campaign to Stop Out-of-Control Drinking
Thanks Conor Dempsey
“The sinister inference is that the young girl has been attacked on her way home.”
That wasn’t my immediate reaction. My immediate reaction was “another drunken row with the boyfriend” but when you have a hammer all you see is nails.
Yeah I’m not getting that inference either. Isn’t it just “look what a drunken mess she is that’s cause she saw you drinking”?
Precisely what I thought. I was very surprised to read that sinister inference.
Liketthat dress- do you see it as black and blue??
+1
The young’un is following in her mothers drinking footsteps, its aimed at mothers/parents as much as daughters/kids.
I didnt / wouldnt have made that connection at all Clíona
Yeah thats exactly the inference I got. I didn’t get victim blaming in the slightest.
+1
As an aside, how has she been attacked on her way home when the glass of wine on the debside locker suggests she’s been drinking at home?
Debside? No more boozing on the way to work for me….
Maybe that’s the mother reference
Yeah, the following thing is following in the footsteps of the mother with her drinking habits, hence the role model.
Nothing to do about an attack. I think the rape crisis network got this competent wrong.
Or her mates.
Or just lost the head and got all lairy shouting a folk and crying and stuff.
Or fell over.
Eitherway, I totally agree.
Errr, or she could have been in a scrap with her scaldy mate Jacinta who wouldn’t give her ends on her smoke, or wit Jazmin hu wz weardin de fayce of me chung’fellit behind de Borza, or she fell asleep in a skip, or got all emotional on the come down from some wopper buzz yiz dzzzzopes.
Girls and guys DO come home from a mad-wan in such a state for reasons other than being sexually assaulted, this I know >_<
If the argument is that we can never show females looking the worse for wear, that's just silliness.
>_<
I haven't pulled that face since I stopped gettin' drunk. Do I miss it, naaah, no fuppin' way :)
Wow. I would have a totally different opinion of the ad.
I see: A woman who looks the worse for drink. In the background is a child in a dressing gown. The message I got is that if you get drunk you’re not creating a good example for your kids (or younger siblings). The strapline of “Who’s following in your footsteps” refers to the next generation.
Just my 2p
A really poorly produced ad then- its as if the company behind it didn’t really want it to work.
is this the gender balance to the ad you see on buses where dad is throwing his ring up while little daughter looks on, tag line along the lines of ‘she’s fed up with your bad parenting’ or some such. it’s like diageo got a few bob from the iona towards the ad.
‘She’s sick of waiting on you’.
Sick, not fed up.
Daul lad is getting sick, you see, and they have… Ah, forget it
I think Cian has outlined the intention of the ad makers. It also took me a few looks to get it though, I think it’s pretty crap!
Also gratuitous wine glass shot. Which company doesn’t make/sell wine then?
In fairness, http://www.diageo.com/EN-IE/OURBRANDS/CATEGORIES/Pages/Wines.aspx.
Anyway, I took it that the person at the door is a younger relative too, especially going by the RoleModels.ie link at the bottom.
It’s a poor ad alright, but Cliona’s reading of it is a bit crazy.
Yes but don’t let the facts get in the way of an opportunity for hysteria.
I didn’t get that out of it either
I got that it was a case of Like Mother Like Daughter, which is probably a valid and necessary message.
Clumsily worded though in fairness to OP
My immediate reaction was “older sister gets a stern warning from younger do-gooding sister on not removing make-up before going to bed”.
Flippant is not my intention – that is honestly what I saw.
“The pillows are RUINED”
Read into things too much much?
Smudged makeup? I’ve seen drunk people look like this- no attack involved. Completely misconstrued then.
Ditto, I saw it as smudged mascara. Mind you, I also saw it as two women having shared a night of romance which one of them now regrets.
SINISTER. BAN THIS SORT OF THING. What a load of nonsense.
I thought this was another attack by the dressing gown bandit.
I think she came back to retrieve her lasso of truth from the bedside locker
Even without the sexual assault angle it is blaming Mammy. So Diageo is paying for scapegoating of mothers whilst peddling booze any which way they can.
Hands off the mammies Diageo. We’re very fond of o them
I wouldn’t take it so literally. It’s not like a dad is going to breeze past that message cos ‘it doesn’t apply to him’. They picked a gender and a family relationship for the ad and they went with it.
Dad is too busy putting washing up liquid in the dishwasher in the kitchen to notice what is happening to the women in his life.
That’s a fair point. Maybe the smudges under her eyes is engine grease and she just looks a little disappointed cos there’s another cv joint starting to go.
Terrible casting – the girl/woman at the door, at first, could be her mam. But looking closer, she seems about 18 herself. Are they sisters? Is the mother sitting and daughter standing? Or vice-versa?
Very confused message in that ad IMO.
Diageo ads are normally so slick and effective- who’d have thought they’d drop the ball on this anti-drinking campaign.
Hungover sister setting bad example for younger sister.
voice of the beehive
I think I love you.
Awkward! I see you more as a friend, but it’s a lovely compliment, thank you.
Wrong account.
How awkward.
*squints* The Mammy looks younger than the daughter.
That’s what I thought as well.
it’s actually a girl crying because her ma is a booze hound. see the empty red wine glass there at the door and the drunkenly cocked head of her ma in the dressing gown?
Oh, and by the by, let’s not forget the subliminal message here from our drinks-sponsored charity to men:
Drinking = Sexy brunette with nice boobs
I’m already standing at the bar
I’m already lowering it.
I really like boobs.
We all do Chris. We all do. But nice to know for the over-inflated price of a Diageo drink, you could get them as a bonus.
How dare Cliona infer that the woman in the background is a woman. It could be her transgender room mate, checking in on her after a rowdy session at the local dog fighting arena.
Its not mascara she has on her face but dried baby guinness’ that she’s tried to imbibe via her eyeballs a la Robert Hayes in Airplane.
:)
Got that very, very wrong Clíona.
FFS.
Perpetually offended, outrage-hunting, privileged, aging first worlders on the public payroll boring us all to death with their failed ideologies (in vogue in 1980) that they so desperately cling on to.
You’d wonder if the outrage is manufactured by Diageo’s competitors.
I suspect though that the RCC are jealous of drink aware’s funding and would prefer if they got more free money so that the feminists could spread promulgate even more propaganda.
lol good luck trying to get people to admit drinking is harmful, sure it’s none of yer business, it’s out culchuuuuure. right, like raping our own daughters after a few, d’ya think yar better than me?? etc etc etc
You’re way off the mark if you think that Irish people don’t see the damage that drinking does.
To me, it looks like the next morning. Girl fell asleep face down, still dressed, polluted. Her Mum/sister is at the door going “What the fupp, Padraigín?”.
No one comes out of this looking good.
“With her mother standing in the bedroom doorway, also the mother is clearly a little person with some kind of medical condition which has left her permanently resembling a twelve-year-old, which only adds insult to injury.”
In all seriousness, the point about the ambiguous wording is fair enough, but the total misread of the image is hilarious.
Bonus: I lornt ir off YOU, Ma! I lornt it from watching YOU!
Anyone?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Elr5K2Vuo
Another evening with ABM
Is that a pair of knickers hanging off the handle of the bedside cabinet?
Clíona even has it wrong from a grammatical perspective:
A sinister implication would be Diageo deliberately creating an ad not explicitly saying it but suggesting that the rape was the victim’s fault.
A sinister, and far more likely, <inference would be that the RCC sees the admittedly confusing but IMO not ‘you asked for it luv’ ad and reasons ‘panda eyes… wine… shame… DIAGEO ARE SAYING SHE WAS RAPED AND SHE’S TO BLAME!’
I personally have woken up in my night-before clothes – though never with a 40-year-old child staring at me – and not once was it due to rape.
Ach. Implication and inference obv the only words supposed to be italicized there
This is what you get with a centre-right government who won’t spend money on health promotion awareness. They give the job to their mates in the relevant private enterprise to atone for their ‘sins’ yet carry on doing the same thing.
Public funding is needed for campaigns like this. Not private parties with obvious vested interests.
Thanks Fine Gael, you shower of cynical hateful c***s.
Just about the most sensible comment on this thread.
My post below is pretty decent also.
Drives to the kernal of the issue.
Sober pandas.
as IF that’s what is meant by the ad. fuppin hell. this country i swear.. its like walkin on eggshells ALL the time.
What a moronic article. girl goes out, gets drunk, just like her mother.
No evidence of an “attack”… Rape crisis centre making a massive leap from a drunk young wan, to a “surviver”… This kind of exaggeration helps nobody.
60 comments in and pretty much everyone agrees this is b*llocks. We’re through the looking glass, people.
My take, she went on an almighty bender and lost her job as a zoo panda due to drunkeness.
That’s it; just like her feckless mother before her she lost her job as a docile, lovable, vegan panda.
There’s one born every minute
Except if you’re a panda
Then it works out about every decade
Crikey, jump to conclusions much there Cliona? I too can jump and jump high as from your statements “that the young girl has been attacked” and “the belief that drunk girls are ‘asking for it”, I believe you are sinisterly infering that men are bástards and a girl can’t go out dressed up nice without some dude pawing at her and attacking her.
I think we can all agree it’s the long haired “weak-attempt-to-hide-my costume-spiderman” in the background that we should be questioning. Get a haircut Parker ya hippy.
That’s clearly a young girl and presumably her young daughter in the doorway, not a sister or mother.
It’s nothing to do with rape or anything like that.
The ad is saying “look what a great role model you are creating for your children”. Nothing more.
But if the ad is causing this much confusion then it obviously is not working.
Agreed
MOTHERS OF IRELAND!
Take care when executing a smokey-eye.
Your daughters may try to emulate and end up going out looking like an inverted Badger.
Aul bowl cut in the doorway is just jealous of panda eyes and her delicious alcohol. Didn’t have to sexually assault her though! It was all the RCC’s fault for putting the idea in her head.
on the theme of out of control drinking – why dont some of the clever lads and lassies do their own poster with the emphasis on a young male who has drank his ass off all night and then gone on to do something horrendous? Rape? Assault? manslaughter?
Rape Crisis Centre shoots itself in the foot again. They really need a PR consultant.
The message is it’s her fault for being drunk and what is more it is also her mother’s fault for her own drinking habits.
No it isn’t. The message is that there are bad people out there and being drunk makes it easier for them to do bad things to you.
On second viewing, the message is “Don’t get messy drunk because it is a negative influence on your little sister”.
…don’t worry, Fergus will be on shortly to explain how you should interpret this word from his sponsor.
Yup. “I’m Behind Arthur Guinness Day and I Approve of this Message.”
Eh, that’s her younger SISTER in the doorway, unless her ma is v v tiny.
And so the eh, “sinister reference” is that her little sis will do the same damn thing.
No mention of her getting attacked.
Her make up’s a state though
Like, who in their right mind doesn’t wear waterproof mascara in this country.
Even her little sis thinks she’s a sham
At the very best it could be open to several interpretations which is invariably the case with drink industry funded responsibility messages. We have seen plenty of other examples:
‘You’d never drink or drive, or would you?’, ‘Know the one that’s one too many”, ‘rethinking our drinking’, ‘enjoy [brand name] responsibly’ are all designed with ambiguity in mind.
“The ads are designed to say, amongst other things, that our behaviour influences those around us” we are told, but judging by the ads themselves, the ‘our behaviour’ only means individual behaviour, it excludes the behaviour of the drinks industry who spend over 70m euro per year urging us to drink more.
Open Letter Opposing Diageo Role Models Shampaign
http://twitter.com/irelandunlocked
Some of you might have seen the other ad with the child standing outside the bathroom holding a camogie stick while her dad kneels over a toilet bowl. We’re told the child is ‘tired of being let down’.
The notion that the average child would prioritise their own needs over worrying about the health and welfare of their parent is a pretty anti-child sentiment and even more so when you consider that Fergus Finlay head of children’s charity Barnardos Ireland approved the ad and Barnardos Ireland support this shampaign.
I wonder if any of the board members ever experienced being in that position as a child themselves?
Even for it’s stated purpose of getting folk to reconsider the fallout of their behaviour, this ad falls very wide of the mark. Most folk simply will not identify with such extreme behaviour. The folk that need to, and are still in a position to, consider the impact of their drinking are parents who are too hung over on Saturday morning to take their kid to practice, or the parent who takes the chance to drive the kid to practice even though they might still be over the limit from the night before, or the parent who isn’t fully engaged with the kid because they’re hungover and feel like crap.
If a parent is at the point where they’re puking in the toilet in front of their kids, it’s going to take much more than an ad campaign to sort them out.
What all these ads do for most of the audience is reinforce the drink industry message that it’s only a small number of people who experience/cause alcohol harm and those people need to think of the kids and sort themselves out.
Here we go.
https://twitter.com/fergusfinlay/status/576040119850921984
Fergus Finlay @fergusfinlay
I completely stand over the ad. “@Irishrolemodels: Statement from the campaign to Stop Out-of-Control Drinking”
Stop drinking the altar wine
I agree with Diageo on this one. No older sister should allow a younger view without perfect face paint. A bitter old drag queen once told me that when you laugh then world laughs with you but when you cry…. your makeup runs.
Then again BS gives Panti too much exposure already.