Swedish ad watchdog rules ‘Distracted Boyfriend’ meme is sexist
Popular image of man ogling another woman deemed degrading and discriminatory
The popular Distracted Boyfriend meme, based on a photo of a man turning away from his outraged girlfriend to stare admiringly at another woman, has been ruled sexist by Sweden’s advertising ombudsman.
The stock image, also known as Man Looking at Other Woman, by Antonio Guillem, a photographer from Barcelona, was named meme of the year in April and was one of the most widely shared memes in 2017, providing comment on anything from music to politics to hit TV shows.
The ombudsman said recruitment advertisements posted on Facebook by the internet services provider Bahnhof, which labelled the boyfriend “You”, the girlfriend “Your current workplace”, and the second woman “Bahnhof”, were gender-discriminatory, the Local reported.
“The advertisement objectifies women,” the ombudsman, RO, said.
“It presents women as interchangeable items and suggests only their appearance is interesting … It also shows degrading stereotypical gender roles of both men and women and gives the impression men can change female partners as they change jobs.”
The ombudsman said the image objectified the two women by presenting them as workplaces, but the man as an individual, and added that the “other woman” was clearly a “sex object … unrelated to the advertisement, which is for recruiting salespeople, operating engineers and a web designer”.
