Bench Fashion Advertisement Analysis
I chose this advertisement that represents LGBT because LGBT is tolerated in the Philippines. There is a large influence of Catholicism in the Philippines.
The Philippines currently has no formal and official legalisation. It is predominantly Christian country, specifically Catholicism. The government is publicly articulating opposition of same sex marriage, this is why the country needs legislation catering to the rights of the LGBT communities. Legislations who are open-minded enough are aware of the struggles this minority group faces, it is a primary and important step towards attaining a more equal and integrated country. Bench, a local Philippines clothing brand released an advertisement called “Love All Kinds Of Love” that shows four different types of love.
Just a day before Valentines Day, Bench released an advertisement that features four panels of “different kinds of love.” The two panels feature traditional love while the other two panels feature homosexual love. The first panel is familial love showing a grandchild and grandmother. The grandchild had his arms wrapped around his grandmother to represent the familial bond. The second panel is romantic love between a man and a woman. This the most commonly accepted love around the world. The third panel is gay love with a man’s arm wrapped around his partner. This panel hit a major in the Catholic country Philippines, prior, the governing body had rejected photos of the couple lovingly looking at each other, citing “traditional Filipino family values” as a reason. It implies that you can be publicly gay but not be in a publicly gay relationship — public display of affection between publicly gay couple is unacceptable. Bench then proposed for a replacement of the gay couple’s current billboard with their hands clasping. The newly edited advertisement blurred out the the hands. The last panel shows lesbian love with two women cuddling to each other. The lesbian love picture did not generate as much noise as the gay love did. In the Philippines, gay love is harder to accept than lesbian love. Either that, or there was an attempt to mask lesbian love as “sisterly love.”
While homosexuality is still formally taboo in the largely Catholic Philippines, Bench speaks radically different from other advertisements like it and “homophobia is at work in this taboo, but so are attitudes about gender that cut across sexual orientation.” The company went 1 against the Catholic Bishops conference of the Philippines and the local government which in an extreme scenario, gets their material taken down. Being a brand such as Bench, it is expected of them to be updated with trends as they deal with lifestyle, and its vast market will surely be abuzz regarding what issues affect the brand. This issue emphasises on the idea of publicity; People may think that they were just doing it for marketing publicity since “publicity is effective precisely because it feeds upon the real. ”
Their Pro-LGBT message puts homosexuality “out there” for discussion, but walked carefully on Filipino sensibilities. The panels showing LGBT love were not foregrounded, but perhaps, treaded too carefully. Message of Pro-LGBT became ambiguous because the advertisement’s presentation mimicked Philippine society’s perception of homosexuality. Even though the Catholic country believes that homosexuality must not be on the foreground and is a reality and is informally accepted yet, I strongly disagree with that because what “issue” is there to solve when how is homosexuality even an issue to begin with? I believed that homosexuality is not a choice.
LGBT has always been a sensitive topic world widely. Bench was tough enough to publish such an advertisement to the publics in a Catholic country. Whether their intentions were to support LGBT or to promote themselves, I believe that Bench’s PRO-LGBT message failed because the message was ambiguous from the very beginning. The order of the pictures made the ad too cautious and cowardly, caution made it open to comprise “blackened hand.” The cowardly advertisement failed to champion LGBT love.