Oh, will you now?
Back in college, I remember sitting in one of those introductory communications classes called "Mass Media and Society" or something of that ilk. We had an assignment to analyze advertising messages and were given pages torn out of magazines to analyze. I can't remember what my own ad was but when I laid eyes on Victory Poker's campaign, I flashed right back to Fisk Hall.
The men in this image are the only ones with seats at the table and cards in front of them. The women are draped around their shoulders like accessories. They aren't playing the game, they're only interested in their men-- and their men don't appear to be interested in them at all for the moment. While each man has a distinctive "look" and personal style, blonde women all have strikingly similar appearances and the brunettes could be twins. The message here is that women do not have a place at the poker table. It's a place for men to play and women to watch. I mean, the women don't even have chairs to sit in! The one in the middle that looks like that plastic surgery chick from The Hills is confined to Andrew Robl's lap.
I understand marketing. I'm extremely pragmatic. And I understand that the online poker market is overwhelmingly young males. Victory Poker is capitalizing on the perception people have of these particular pro endorsers' jet-setting, nightclubbing Vegas lifestyles. And that might get them some customers. Hell, it might get them a whole lot of customers. I just hope that the female players out there think twice about supporting a site that obviously thinks so little of them. I've always had a lot more respect for the online sites (coughPokerStarscough) who haven't ever found the need to resort to such shameless marketing tactics and have instead relied on the quality of their product.
I also read this morning that the WSOP's Milwaukee's Beast No-Limit Lounge or whatever the fuck they called it last year has been renamed "The Man-Cave." While my inner feminist was initially fired up over this as well, I've decided to let the WSOP have their man-cave. Women are too smart to drink that flavorless piss of a beer. I also have the sneaking suspicion that if Jeffrey Pollack was still the commissioner of the WSOP, the unfortunate moniker would have been done away with. Miss you, commish.
I'm used to being a woman in an overwhelmingly male-dominated field. I've done it my whole life. I just hoped we'd come a little further than crap like this.
