An Oscar winner for a bizarre ad

The new spoof video with Marion Cotillard, who won the Academy Award as best actress for 2007 movie La Vie en Rose, shows how men look at women (or better where they look) with the purpose of redirecting the male glaze from the chest to the eyes.

In the clip, you can see the beautiful actress while she is working in an office. Although she has magnetic blue eyes all men colleagues around her are more interested of another part of her body. At one point she said that “to get the respect of a man you have to make him look in your eyes” and the bizarre product is completed with “scientific lab tests” that prove its efficacy.

The clip is at the same time silly, provocative and funny and I guess it will become another viral video.

Ladies’ comments about the video on the web are generally good, and some women tell their story to confirm men’s behavior (the Sun). On the other hand, men just briefly comment on it, not really taking any position.

In my opinion, the idea is funny in the sense it is recorded as it reproduces a “cosmetic ad” where a beautiful top model presents a problem and then introduces to you the product to solve it, supported by scientific tests. If the goal of the video were just to make people smile, then it accomplishes it. On the other hand, if they really want to discuss about a general male behavior I don’t think this is the right way to follow, since in the end the actress looks pretty stupid; they should instead have made a more sophisticated video with a refined message. It seems to me that the clip is very simple and a low level mass product for this issue.

In my opinion, although it is true that men usually look at women’s chest, it is also relevant how the women dress up. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want women to wear “polo neck sweater”, but sometimes I can see some colleagues that wear exceptionally low-neck dress or shirt. By wearing them they not only attract male’s glazes but also women’s critics.

I don’t agree that in America women deal more than other countries with “sexual objectification wherever they go - especially on the workplace” (from the video). I think that is a general “issue” spread all around the world and, to be honest, in the US women’s right are generally more protective than other countries, thanks to some corrective actions like the sexual harassment provisions.

I have checked Marion Cotillard’s career and I saw that she actively participates in campaigns for environmental protection, for example she helped Greenpeace in different projects. I hope that this video won’t affect her good public profile in a negative way. People should think of her as Édith Piaf, the character of the famous movie La Vie en Rose, not as the attractive woman with “forehead tittaes”.