If only the cows knew: a clichéd TV ad on Benna’s red velvet milk ignites a debate on gender inequality

Holy cow: milk is making news in Malta.

An advert for the new ‘red velvet’ flavour in the line of Benna’s milk products is stoking a predictable storm of reactions for its sexualisation (and genderisation) of its new flavour.

Set in an office, a male co-worker helping himself to a glass of the new flavoured milk. As he imbibes his scarlet, chocolately lactic pick-me-up, he is instantly lusting for his female colleague right across the office. Cue the sensual imagery, pulsating beats, red LED lighting, red dress, red shirt, and some fingertip-footsie. It’s red velvet milk, lads: sex.

One MP who was not having any of it was Therese Comodini Cachia of the Nationalist Party, who made her views clear on Facebook. “If sex and women is all you can come up with to sell your product, then Maltese dairy farmers are certainly in trouble. Just wondering what adverts for other flavours will look like!” she said in a call-out to Benna, the company that produces the milk on behalf of all Maltese milk producers. “It’s 2021 and about time that the list of products associated with women and sex for adverts is shortened rather than lengthened.”

Similary, the gender studies expert Prof. Brenda Murphy wrote on Facebook: “In a context where we are all aware of the fact that nearly three out of every four women are sexually harassed in the workplace - we are repulsed by your toxic ad for a Milkshake. We urge people who are for gender equaliy and for better, balanced media to use their consumer sovereignty and boycott this and any other product that objectifies women, insults male integrity, and reinforces dangerous stereotypes.”

But there is one group which did not take kindly to the MP’s protestations: dairy farmers themselves. In a Facebook post on a page claiming to represent Malta’s dairy farmers, they accused the MP of attention-seeking by claiming the advert was sexist. Resting comfortably on the positive comments on Facebook, they said: “going by what people said… she is not right and the drama she tried to create has come to nothing. Livestock farmers in Malta want politicians who believe in their product just like the majority of consumers and to defend their product, not pounce on them to gain some political advantage. The shade this MP tried to throw on this product is condemnable.”

The regrettable tradition of sexualising products in advertising has a long history. TV presenter Romina Bonaci famously volunteered herself to an erotic display of ice-cream slurping in a Gelati Riviera advert from the 1990s (li trid, x’hin trid, fejn trid… whatever you want, whenever, wherever) in what could be the most osé of taboo-busting adverts.

More recently, in 2016 two adverts from the Ta’ Qali nightclub Uno Malta were the target of negative online backlash: the ad showed two female models in a game of tennis as two men look on. As the camera shots linger on the models’ posteriors and one of them strips off her t-shirt in a teasing gesture for the seated male onlookers, she swoops up her racquet to perform a serve. As the camera pans upward, the tagline ‘Game On’ appears on the screen. The ad provoked an important statement by the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality (NCPE) decrying the “pervasive sexualisation of women and girls” in media, as reinforcing the stereotype that a woman’s value is determined by her physical appearance and that woman’s primary role is that of pleasing men.

Just like the dairy farmers who want their milk to have unobstructed access to all gullible minds and mouths, the reaction of Uno owner Kevin Decesare at the time was a “what’s the big deal” rebuttal: “You see women dressed like that all the time on TV or out in Paceville… This advert isn’t lewd – it was just a bit of suggestive fun.”

That would be the equivalent of saying, office colleagues are always fantasising about each other anyway, so why not use that perception to ply a new milk flavour? And therein lies the unwelcome rub, since, as Prof. Murphy points out in a Facebook post on the Mediating Women page, 75% of female respondents to a Women’s Rights Foundation survey, experienced sexual harassment at the workplace, and that three out of 10 also believe victims of sexual harassment are partly to blame because of the way they dress or behave.

That’s because workplaces remain places of unequal social relations, with women being one of the most targeted groups, be it on pay differences, or where it comes to harassment or violence. The Benna ad may be guilty of wantonly buying into that notion.

With the livestock farmers now claiming Comodini Cachia is only kicking up a fuss, this milk crisis risks being another example where calls for gender equality are misrepresented as moralistic outbursts by people in power. By pitting livestock farmers against the MP, this episode is redolent of the Anne Fenech pastizzi incident: when the PN president and finer-things-in-life-connoisseur raised a stink over the prime minister inviting European heads of government to a humble te fit-tazza and pastizz at Rabat’s Crystal Palace. The outburst forced Fenech into retreat, having to eat the humble snack at said establishment in an act of contrition.

It’s doubtful that the MP will be making some volte-face about a trite television ad that plays on a clichéd sexualisation of the workplace. Although, will anyone throw down the gauntlet on the strangely sexualised Je Me Casse video for Destiny’s Eurovision song? They say it’s about female empowerment, but the guy in the video is all naked and helpless...