Book of Leaves

There are reasons I don't watch tv. There are reasons I don't read the papers or listen to the radio. There are reasons I don't go to most popular movies.

In 1979, when I was 18 years old, I was raped. The man who raped me, after he did it, handed me a Susan B. Anthony dollar.

This image brought all that back today. An almost pubescent boy hands an adult male lifeguard a Pepsi. They are both standing over a woman who has obviously been dragged up the beach because she was drowning. She is unconscious between them, probably dying. The lifeguard hands the kid his lifeguard shirt. The ad's title is "French Kiss." The implication is that the lifeguard is trading a soda for the kid to have a chance to molest this unconscious, half-drowned woman.

In this picture, a woman's life is worth less than a soda. My life, my body, was worth one dollar to the man who raped me. Coming on top of John McCain's airquotes around women's "health," this only adds vinegar to the open wounds of dehumanization. If you wish to contact Pepsi about this ad, please contact them here. Please let them know that images depicting the casual disregard of women's lives and women's bodies is wrong and reprehensible. Please, I ask you, consider boycotting Pepsi products until this ad is removed and apologies are made for their hideous insensitivity.

I spent the better part of the day today in flashbacks, shaky and barely able to function. I ended up drinking most of a bottle of wine to get myself numb enough to do anything through this. I imagine I'm going to be massively hung over tomorrow. I know this is my personal reaction and I don't usually drink to numb myself -- I haven't done anything like this since I was in the Navy back in 1982. I have no idea how to handle such callous disregard for a woman's life posed as "clever" advertising. This is the email I sent to Pepsi tonight:

I am writing about your ad, titled "French Kiss" -- it depicts an unconscious woman, dragged from the sea, and a lifeguard and a young man standing over her dying body, trading a soda for the lifeguard's shirt.

This ad shows such an abhorrent disregard for women that I cannot begin to explain it to you if you are the kind of person who would publish such a thing. It is not cute. It is not amusing. It is not funny. It is disgusting and it left me spending my entire day today in flashbacks to a rape I endured when I was 18 years old, back in 1979. When the man finished, he handed me a Susan B. Anthony dollar. Like the woman in your ad copy, my life was worth less than soda.

This is disgusting. This is irresponsible. This is treating women as a joke, as less than human, as objects rather than human beings. I cannot imagine how anyone would think this was clever -- it is horrifying.

Rape is not a joke. Leaving a woman dying on the sand, an object for sexual abuse, is not a joke. This ad is an obscenity and it should be removed immediately from circulation.

Why do we need feminism? Because of things like this. Because women are not objects to be traded for a soda. Because women's bodies are not to be abused for the sum of a dollar coin. Because women are human beings too.

Fuck you, Pepsi.