Reading Joe. My. God. this morning, I came across an article featuring the “creepiest cell phone ad ever,” and it was indeed creepy, and disgusting, so I felt the need to rant about it for a moment. Have you ever seen/experienced something that just repulsed you? Left you with crawling skin and an urgent need to smack something? That’s kind of how I felt after watching that ad.

For those of you who don’t feel like watching the ad (and my visually impaired readers), it opens with a woman lying in a bed, wearing a negligee and loosely covered in sheets. Then, the shot goes wide, and we see a man in a window across the way, looking into her bedroom. He raises his cell phone, takes a picture, and then starts, uhm, using the touch screen on the cell phone to manipulate the woman. At the close of the ad, her fire sprinklers go off, and she sits up in bed and apparently thinks “fire sprinklers are hot sexytime fun,” as opposed to “oh my God, my house is on fire,” so she writhes around with a sultry expression. Then, the man’s phone rings, and it turns out to be his mother, and the ad fades out with the woman in the bed again, and the tagline “keep a secret.” Did I mention that the guy is licking his lips while manipulating the phone? Because he is.

As I watched the ad, my discomfort level rose to hitherto unknown levels, and I found myself increasingly disgusted and distressed. So much so, in fact, that I found it hard to even begin articulating why the ad bothered me so much.

Oh, let’s start with the idea that women are just playthings for voyeurs, as one of the commenters pointed out, and that it is apparently totally acceptable to peep into the windows of attractive women while they sleep. And yeah, being manipulated remotely via a complete stranger (we assume, from the context of the ad), yeah, that’s also apparently totally cool. And, you know. Hot. It’s a rape fantasy for the electronic age, complete with the idea that every woman secretly wants it, and I hope that every woman (and everyone else) who sees it is very not-secretly horrified by it.

It makes me wonder what market the commercial was aimed at. Is it meant to spark controversy and horror to draw attention to the brand of cellphone being advertised? Was it intended to end up on the sorts of sites where people exchange gross, disgusting, exploitative videos? Was it never meant for general release at all? I’m not sure, but whatever the origins of the ad, I wish it would climb back into them.

Several of the queer commenters on the thread related to the advertisement also pointed out that ads like this are much more acceptable than ads with gay sexual themes. Had the scene depicted a female voyeur, or a man lying in the bed, it probably would have sparked controversy. Apparently, only heterosexual women are allowed to be the subjects of televised rape fantasies and virtual abuse.

I need to go take a shower now.