Women in this culture are supposed to serve men. Serve men what? and how? Well, serve men food, and serve men sexually. Feminist theorist Carol J. Adams notes that in fact women are often represented as food in our pornographic culture in which male possession of the female mirrors male dominance over animals.

Certainly the Burger King commercial which ran during the Super Bowl exactly fits her paradigm. We see dancing girls dressed as burger parts singing about their "sole purpose" which is "fulfilling your wishes." In the commercial these maniacally cheerful hamburger fixings tell us they are "always willing," and they wink and nod lasciviously as they say so just in case we're too obtuse to catch the sexual overtones. "Yes, we're tasty and eye-popping," they assure us, and also that they are available just as women in pornography are available. "Hey, we're hard core," they shout. Just ask the "freaky King." We see him smiling and waving a phallic torch, ruling over a land of women who are also food--thrilled to be used by men. Explicitly invoking the language of pornography, "hard core" and "freaky," forces us to associate women with graphic and exploitative sex, and, by association, meat eating with dominating women and enjoying sadistic pleasure in doing so.

In case you are wondering, cows aren't really thrilled to be raised as machines and then brutally slaughtered. But there's no cows in this ad, for the women stand in for the cows, who become what Adams terms the "absent referent." We don't need to think about our food sources, in other words, only about how appropriate it is to use women, how much we like being used. It's our "sole purpose."

At the conclusion each of these "pieces" falls into a pile thus constructing the burger. We hear their "oofs" and groans of pain. Why add this detail into the soundtrack? Because the viewer is meant to get off on dominating women, just as he is asked to get off on dominating non-human animals. Yes, the viewer is a "he," the normative human subject of our culture. Three guesses who the "you" in "have it your way" refers to. Here's a hint: it isn't us women. We're the servile burger parts.

This ad lays bare the mechanics of male privilege. "We don't blame your jaw for dropping," trill the meat-females. It's true that my jaw was dropping, but it was not because they looked so hot. My jaw dropped because in a land predicated on equality we still condone such blatant sexism. It ain't my way, and I'm not having it.

Why not tell Burger King you're not having it either?