"That's So Gay" Is So Passé
A series of new TV ads aims to make “that’s so gay” passé.
The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network along with the Advertising Council have launched a new public service campaign featuring celebrities such as Hillary Duff and Wanda Skyes challenging the use of homophobic expressions.
In Skyes’ ad, she spots a group of teens looking at a statue at a pizzeria and saying “that’s so gay!”. Skyes approaches the teens and replies “Don’t say that something is gay when you mean that something is dumb or stupid,” she snaps. “It’s like if I thought this pepper shaker was stupid and I said, ‘Man, this pepper shaker is so 16-year-old boy with a cheesy moustache.’”
Duff’s ad shows her challenging a pair of teenage girls saying that unfashionable clothes are “gay”. The ads end with the celebrity voiceover saying “When you say, ‘That’s so gay’ Do you realise what you say? Knock it off.”
The ads have been distributed to around 33,000 media stations across the US this week and MTV and other networks have committed to supporting the campaign.
Head of the creative team behind the ad, John Staffen says advertising plays a big role in changing public behaviour.
“We’ve kind of institutionalised the acceptance of this derogatory speech in popular culture, and I think as communicators we have a responsibility to help lift society to some degree,” said Staffen, chief creative officer at ArnoldNYC. “We’re trying to open up a dialogue and let [teens] make up their own mind. As soon as we show the ads to people, they go, ‘Wow, I never really thought about it like that.’”
A website has also been launched as part of the campaign at www.thinkb4youspeak.com to co-incide with National Ally Week (October 13-17) next week, which encourages students to pledge to help stop bullying and harrassment of LGBTI teens. The website provides tips on how to support LGBT people and stand up against anti-gay language.
The ads come at a very critical time, with a national school survey in the US revealing that nine out of ten LGBTI teens report having been verbally harrassed in the past school year and almost half of those have been physically harrassed because of their LGBTI status.
Here’s what Chris “Leave Britney Alone” Crocker has to say on the issue:
You can watch the new commercials here:
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weathervain
said last month on the 19th