Every now and then, we’ll run into a product that makes us wonder why it exists. Sometimes, it’s supposed to do something sensible, but fails at it so hard that it just turns out completely useless.
In other cases, it’s pretty clear that the only reason why somebody would buy it is so they have a gag gift for a friend. For cases like that, silliness is encouraged.
Still, everybody has a threshold for when a level of silliness stops being funs and starts being aggravating. And some Twitter users hit theirs thanks to a novelty snack in the U.K.
While on a shopping trip, Twitter user Gemma Aitchison found a product that made her ask British retailer Poundland a question.
As she wrote in a tweet , “What exactly are you trying to say with these products @Poundland to the families who come in store?”
The marshmallow “boobies” had an accompanying butt-themed candy, which clearly showed what it was supposed to remind us of.
The fact the butt here was explicitly supposed to be female did not escape Aitchison’s notice.
As she wrote , “No sign of any male things to sexually assault. No testicles to grab at?”
And Aitchison wasn’t the only one who saw fit to give the company the side-eye.
Some responses to her tweet, ranged from “ew” to “WTF,” while others were reminded of a similarly sexually-charged Christmas ad for the store where two elves played strip poker with some dolls.
However, some users seemed to react more to her disappointed response than the product itself.
For them, a candy depicting some disembodied breasts and butts was a non-issue. They saw this as a case of people being too quick to find offense.
Based on their response, this attitude didn’t seem too far off from how representatives from Poundland felt about the situation.
As one told The Mirror , “It’s fine for you to look the other way and ignore it. Here at Poundland, we think it’s ok that sometimes we don’t always get it right for everyone.
Because, frankly it’s impossible to do that. Just because someone doesn’t like something we do, we also believe that doesn’t give them the automatic right to stop us doing it for thousands of other people who like it.”
However, for critics like Rachel Corry, there was a bigger issue at stake than Poundland seemed to appreciate.
The issue wasn’t just that a candy company decided to market itself as raunchy, but rather that it was doing so in a way that encouraged sexual objectification.
After all, it’s not as if the candy world is any stranger to phallic products. Granted, this imagery is often unintentional.
For instance, it’s not difficult to understand how someone could see these and only think they looked like cherries. Of course, it’s also very easy to see another shape entirely here.
Yet, some candies are explicitly made to look exactly how we think they look.
They’re often used as gag gifts for bachelorette parties and cake toppers.
But again, Aitchison’s issue with the marshmallows she found wasn’t the fact that the butt candy she found didn’t also have a version with a hunky male cartoon to objectify. That part of the tweet was sarcastic.
As she would later clarify, her concerns had more to do with the harm that sexual objectification can do.
And tragically, she experienced a personal reason to have this concern six years ago.
So while she’s aware that it’s just a marshmallow taken on its own, it’s not just a marshmallow in the context of a society where something like this can happen.
Besides, it’s not like there isn’t a way to make a neutral butt-shaped product if that’s something that must be done.
What matters is the framing and context of the product, and Aitchison and Corry found little in the context of the marshmallows to be impressed by.
