Hot Chicks Eating Burgers: Carl's Jr. Finds a New, Sexist Way to Hawk Its Disgusting Crap

Posted by Tana Ganeva, AlterNet at 12:01 PM on July 8, 2009.

It’s a little-known industry secret that models and actresses eat massive amounts of fast food. That’s why Carl’s Jr.’s recent series of ads, featuring “top-rated bikini body” Audrina Patridge ramming a Carl’s Jr. burger in her mouth while wiggling around in a gold bikini, is both realistic and helpful.

“To look this hot in a bikini” she coos, “I have to give up ... like ... everything. But there is no way I’m giving up that Terriyaki burger. I have to be a little bad. I call it my ... bikini burger.”

Is this a public service announcement? Because it's about time somebody armed women with the information they need to achieve the sexy, lithe frame of a pre-pubescent boy with fake boobs.

But that’s not the only way Carl’s Jr. has chosen to empower women. The burger chain is also offering some lucky "girls" the life-changing opportunity to star in their own Carl’s Jr. commercial. A few days ago Feministing posted a blog about a craigslist ad promising women 1,000 dollars and a spot in a Carl's Jr./Hardees ad if they “submit a video of themselves eating one of their burgers and is "hot" enough for their marketing campaign.”

While the Craigslist ad is down, the campaign is still in the works. And if you needed more convincing of the burger chain’s noble intentions, the kicker to the campaign, itself aptly titled “Hot Chicks Eating Burgers”, is “More than just a piece of meat.” It’s like a fun-house mirror version of the ads in the Dove 'real beauty' campaign (in themselves problematic, but not in such a vomity way.)

Now, before Carl's Jr. decided to promote the interests of women, their ad campaigns for a million years consisted of those infuriating "dude-bro" commercials. In those ads, manly, attractive guys did manly things like ignore their carping, whiny girlfriends while eating manly things like Carl's Jr. burgers.

The ads were skin-crawlingly, bile-inducingly sexist. (Sarah Haskin's has a great take-down here). They didn't just reproduce fucked-up gender stereotypes the way most mainstream advertising does, or rely on the milder sit-com sexism of the "women keeping their slob husbands in line" variety. It was more like this: life is hard because women are obnoxious idiots that want to control you. But, here's how you can a)control them instead b) escape them c) trick them into having sex with you. Also, eat Carl's Jr. burgers cause real men EAT MEAT, not the broccoli their castrating girlfriends keep pushing.

So, if their M.O. in the past was to shill their crap by tapping into larger societal contempt for attractive women, what's the strategy with the latest campaign? Exploiting sexist stereotypes, while selling to women and getting women to do their advertising for them? And all the while keeping their target audience -- straight dudes -- tuned in with ads showing semi-nude waifs tonguing burgers pornographically.

There's something for everyone!