Ad Hoc: Gender BendingBy Tom WeisandThe Improper Bostonian Contributed by Kay O'Brien See Related Story As usual, advertising is a little late catching up with social assimilation Advertising reflects society, so when Holiday Inn pays $1.2 million during the Super Bowl to convey the idea that its billion-dollar facelift is akin to a man undergoing a sex change operation and attending her high school reunion, something's up. The Super Bowl is the most testosterone-boosted bacchanal this side of ancient Rome. That the ad was pulled after consumers and fran- chises objected is not surprising. That it was shown at all to that audience was the big astounder. While Holiday Inn is the most main- stream marketer to allude to the world of the transgendered -- which includes the cross-dressers, transsexuals, trans vestites and drag queens -- it's not the. first. As near as I can tell, that ground was broken by Sauza tequila in a print ad three years ago. That ad, which ran in "hip" books like Buzz and Swing and Vanity Fair, showed a beautiful bikini-clad babe jogging down the beach. Copy told us she used to be a he and that life was ba- sically unfair, so we should drown our sorrows in the Mexican liquor, or something like that. The impact of this ad lay in the fact that its model really had been a man and really was incredi- bly sexy. Any man (or woman) who drooled over the tightly packed model had to reassess his own sexuality, if only for that moment. In the years since that provocative ad, MAC Cosmetics hired the world's most down-home drag queen, Ru- Paul, to tout its line of face powders, lipsticks and liners. After all, who knows more about (and uses more) makeup than a female impersonator? The Lady Ru is mighty in these MAC ads, her leather-clad body a reminder that what meets the eye is sometimes not what's really going on. No one makes an impression like a 6'6" man in a dress. MAC also put the diminutive k.d. lang in the ads, she who posed for the cover of Vanity Fair a few years back being shaved by Cindy Crawford. As for the third instance -- the clincher that makes this a trend -- in two TV spots for Rent, playing at the Shubert Theatre in Boston, the drag queen character Angel appears in her Santa Claus-from-the-Salvation Army drag, singing "La Vie Boheme" in one spot and "Rent" in the other. While she's not identified as an actor playing an actress, those who have seen the show or read about it know this ain't no Ethel Merman they're looking at. What's unusual is that the Rent ads are broadcast during morning programming, including Channel 7's Today, a show whose share of suburban viewers doubtless do not see drag queens every day (at least that they're aware of). These examples of how far Madison Avenue has come in terms of bending gender reflect how far our society has come (or, as some are no doubt thinking, how far we've sunk). When society low- ers the bar of acceptance for certain groups, advertising is usually a little late catching up. The number of African-Americans in advertising has historically been quite low. Only in the last decade has advertis- ing become somewhat diversified. Another group historically absent from the sanitized world of advertising is the disabled. Members of that group first made an impact in advertising when Bill Demby took off his sweatpants to reveal two artificial legs in a Dupont ad about a decade ago. Which brings us back to the trans- gendered. RuPaul has her own VH-1 talk show. TV shows like Twin Peaks and The Nanny have featured gender- bender characters. And movies from the serious (The Crying Game) to the frivolous (Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) have fueled the fire. With advertising picking up on these queens, it seems clear the topic's risk factor is low enough that a way of life once only whispered about can now sell a hotel room or a theater ticket. That's got "trend" written all over it.
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