Tuesday, February 13, 2007
The other night, some of my fellow Fulbright friends and I were sitting around after dinner. I can't remember how the subject came up, but for some reason I mentioned these new Lindex ads for an underwear sale they're having. There are several different versions, but each of them has a picture of the torso of a woman in her skivvies. The women are all of various sizes and plastered across their chests is the phrase "We love all boobs" in really big letters. Now, I've never been one for underwear ads, especially, but I thought this was pretty great. My friend Alison chimed in that it may actually make up for those horribly misogynistic Coke ads from a few months ago ...
Oh, yeah. That would be an interesting thing to write about. So. For many years there has been one diet cola in Norway, and that is Pepsi Max. All consumers of diet cola in Norway have been happily consuming Pepsi Max, oblivious to any alternative options that might be out there. The good people at Coca-Cola, therefore, decided it was time to make a move in the Norwegian diet cola market. They released Coke Zero in conjunction with the most expensive ad campaign that's ever been unleashed upon the Norwegian public. These posters were everywhere. And they were seriously awful. They said things like "Why not two girlfriends with ZERO jealousy?" and "Why not bras with ZERO fumbling?" So, in addition to being horribly sexist, they were in blatantly bad English. I guess the logic behind the misogynistic ad campaign was that, so far, the consumers of diet cola in Norway had been women. Meanwhile, the 16-30 year old male demographic had been left untapped! Obviously what the young men of Norway needed was a diet soda just for them. Because teenage boys are so into diet soda. If you don't know this already, Norway is a country that's very concerned with gender equality. I believe the UN named them the best country in the world to be a woman a few years ago. And this isn't just a matter of legislation. The general social mores tend toward like-treatment of women and men (i.e., no holding doors for women just because they're women, lots of men walking alone through the forest with a baby carriage and two toddlers hanging off of them). Personally, I think all of this is pretty progressive and impressive (excuse the rhyme), so I was really wondering how the Norwegian public would receive these ads. The jury, I guess, is still out on that one. However, one of the Fulbright scholars did write a scathing letter to the Coca-cola company.
... Now, let's get back to the bra ads. The word (or more properly abbreviation) for bra in Norwegian is BH. In the course of our conversation about these ads, one of us posed the question: "What does BH actually stand for?" There was a pause. Then Alison says reluctantly ... "bryst ... holder ... en?"
Now the words "breast" and "bryst" are obviously pretty much cognates. And "holder" is one of those words that I'm not sure actually exists in the Norwegian language, but it could, I suppose. And then once you ad the suffix "en", you've turned it into a definite noun in Norwegian, so there you go. We all sort of laughed at our silly, Frankenstein's monster-style word, and then moved on to discussing whom we could reasonably ask about the meaning of BH without them looking at us like we're idiots.
Later that evening, it occurred to me to actually look the word up in the dictionary. There was nothing behind the word BH except the pronunciation, so I went looking in the "bryst-" section.
There it was "brystholderen." I immediately sent Alison a gleeful text message, to which she replied: "Norwegians are nothing if not literal. That is scary."
Oh, yeah. That would be an interesting thing to write about. So. For many years there has been one diet cola in Norway, and that is Pepsi Max. All consumers of diet cola in Norway have been happily consuming Pepsi Max, oblivious to any alternative options that might be out there. The good people at Coca-Cola, therefore, decided it was time to make a move in the Norwegian diet cola market. They released Coke Zero in conjunction with the most expensive ad campaign that's ever been unleashed upon the Norwegian public. These posters were everywhere. And they were seriously awful. They said things like "Why not two girlfriends with ZERO jealousy?" and "Why not bras with ZERO fumbling?" So, in addition to being horribly sexist, they were in blatantly bad English. I guess the logic behind the misogynistic ad campaign was that, so far, the consumers of diet cola in Norway had been women. Meanwhile, the 16-30 year old male demographic had been left untapped! Obviously what the young men of Norway needed was a diet soda just for them. Because teenage boys are so into diet soda. If you don't know this already, Norway is a country that's very concerned with gender equality. I believe the UN named them the best country in the world to be a woman a few years ago. And this isn't just a matter of legislation. The general social mores tend toward like-treatment of women and men (i.e., no holding doors for women just because they're women, lots of men walking alone through the forest with a baby carriage and two toddlers hanging off of them). Personally, I think all of this is pretty progressive and impressive (excuse the rhyme), so I was really wondering how the Norwegian public would receive these ads. The jury, I guess, is still out on that one. However, one of the Fulbright scholars did write a scathing letter to the Coca-cola company.
... Now, let's get back to the bra ads. The word (or more properly abbreviation) for bra in Norwegian is BH. In the course of our conversation about these ads, one of us posed the question: "What does BH actually stand for?" There was a pause. Then Alison says reluctantly ... "bryst ... holder ... en?"
Now the words "breast" and "bryst" are obviously pretty much cognates. And "holder" is one of those words that I'm not sure actually exists in the Norwegian language, but it could, I suppose. And then once you ad the suffix "en", you've turned it into a definite noun in Norwegian, so there you go. We all sort of laughed at our silly, Frankenstein's monster-style word, and then moved on to discussing whom we could reasonably ask about the meaning of BH without them looking at us like we're idiots.
Later that evening, it occurred to me to actually look the word up in the dictionary. There was nothing behind the word BH except the pronunciation, so I went looking in the "bryst-" section.
There it was "brystholderen." I immediately sent Alison a gleeful text message, to which she replied: "Norwegians are nothing if not literal. That is scary."
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 8:52 AM.
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3:52 PM
I loved this post. And brystholderen? I'm going to start using that at Victoria's Secret. "Ma'am, would you like to try our new Secret Embrace Brystholderen?"