Objectify This

Female sexuality in popular culture is usually indicated by the degree to which the female in question is an object of another’s desire, not a subject. Women who express sexual desire must be hot (read: skinny, young, buxom) or their sexuality is construed as too repulsive and vulgar to conform to social norms. Men, however, do not need to be attractive to be acting sexual since they are the subjects of sexuality: hence, the Man Show full of fat men drinking beer and watching skinny women bounce their breasts on trampolines is fine, because America envisions itself as a nation of fat men drinking beer wishing they could see some breasts. I don’t know if there will ever be a day for fat women to sit around drinking beer watching naked men jump around. Women don’t even get to drink beer because it’s fattening and masculine: grunt, Budwiser, the King of Beers.

This clip is a Dorito’s commercial which portrays a plump woman as sexual.

But the cashier’s carnal appetite is converted to appetite for chips at the end of the clip for a laugh; because obviously women are neither subjects (except to actual inanimate objects such as chips) or acceptable as sexual when plump and/or eating. The combination of the woman’s orgasmic noises with her devotion to chips is funny, but also sad: even though this commercial appears to have been made by amateurs as a part of a contest, it conforms to widespread societal norms about the unsexiness and loneliness of plumpness.

Yet the clip also ends with the cashier returning to her professional control, with the line “We’re going to need a cleanup on register six.” Does it reflect a positive portrayal of plump female sexuality and, (most unusually) initiation, or does it simply demonstrate that plump female sexuality is as absurd as sex in behind the checkout counter?