Kenny Rogers, I thought you were selling chicken?

Answer this question:

In this particular video ad, what is Kenny Rogers selling?

A. Garlic Butter Roast Chicken (Product)
B. Solenn Heussaff (Endorser)
C. Fitness
D. Sex

And the correct answer is, letter D, sex.

Now before you say what an overreacting Christian feminist I am, please allow me to unpack each answer and explain why I believe, as a media literacy advocate, that Kenny Rogers is selling sex, instead of all the other options mentioned.

❌ A. Chicken 

To the unknowing consumer, of course it's just automatic to assume Kenny Rogers is selling chicken in their new commercial. Besides, isn't Kenny Rogers the name that made roasted chicken famous? (I mean, apart from country records? LOL.) But, here's what I noticed. Something was lacking if indeed chicken is the product being sold here. Where are the food "porn" shots of that perfectly seasoned chicken skin, fresh off the rotisserie? Where's the zoomed in shot of chicken meat being sliced to reveal that juicy, flavorful meat? WHERE ARE THE MONEY SHOTS OF THE DARN ROASTED CHICKEN???

Well, you don't see it because it's not what the video is trying to sell.


❌ B. Solenn Heussaff

Assessing the true message of this ad in my mind, I asked myself: If it's not chicken they're selling, then maybe it's their brand endorser, Solenn. But as I continued to analyze the video, the more it revealed to me that NOPE! It's also not Solenn. Here's why. If they were truly banking on Solenn Heussaff and using her to sell the chicken, they wouldn't have depicted her as this hot chick (pun intended) eating their chicken like she was having passionate sex on the brink of an orgasm. They would have made the video in a way that Solenn's personality shines through—her kakengkoyan, her realness, her personality. In short, they would've showcased her personhood—what makes Solenn distinctly Solenn.


❌ C. Fitness

A clear advertisement from Kenny Rogers selling FITNESS through their food products.

I've seen billboards of Kenny Rogers, and as a receiver of their ad's messages, I hear them loud and clear when they say they're a healthy brand. Kenny Rogers is indeed a wiser fast food option for people who are pursuing wellness, as compared to eating chicken from other chains like say, Jollibee, McDonald's, or KFC. And looking at the kinds of food they offer, they're not lying IF you know what items to order off their menu. From the perspective of someone on a high fat and low carb lifestyle, of course I'd tell you to skip the muffins, fruits (fructose = sugar), mac and cheese (and all the other carbo sides for that matter), gravy (has flour), and salad dressings laden with sugar. Roasted chicken is healthy paired with greens and salads. So like what I mentioned, if you do know what to order, getting a meal from Kenny Rogers can be gains for your health. Now, going back to my point (apologies for digressing). What I really want to say here is fitness isn't what's being sold in this particular advertisement. If this was the case, then the video would've highlighted or connected anything that shouts FITNESS through eating right.

You could argue that showing off the fit body of Solenn—as this video kept zooming in on her body parts—can be connected to fitness, and I won't say you're completely wrong. However, in that argument, fitness is only secondary to the main message of the ad. With how concise mainstream media has to be to communicate what they're marketing effectively, they should've been more clear and blatant about the fitness message. Besides, as evident in this Kenny Rogers ad (above) with athletes as their endorsers from years back, they do know how to promote their products through fitness.


✔ D. Sex

Like I said, brands are very meticulous with the message of their advertisements and this is why they have total control of what their endorser's image will convey. If you study advertisements closely, you will notice that companies usually make their brand colors visible through their endorser's clothing. If the brand is targeting a younger market, they get a young celebrity that appeals to this specific market. If it's a product for mothers, they get a mother to represent their business. If they have a tag line, they make sure their endorser says this over and over again for easy recall or they create a catchy jingle out of it.

That being said, let's break this steamy video down. First of all, Solenn is wearing a very skimpy outfit, (akin to Beyonce's vibe in her music video, Crazy In Love, which is about a woman obsessing over her male lover to the point of insanity). Cropped white tank plus short shorts combo. On top of that, they made her wear a belly button ring. It is a fact that an outfit communicates a message to the world. This is why uniforms are important, and why certain gatherings require a specific kind of ensemble for its attendees. So now I ask, who is she speaking to while wearing this kind of outfit? Do you think it's her mother? Her brother? Her girlfriends? Women? Of course not. To put it bluntly and simply, her vibe as depicted through her outfit, is talking to men.




Now, the setting. She is filmed in a studio with a dim background, with nothing else to distract you from. It sort of sets that mood of intimacy. This insists on getting your full and undivided attention as you watch the video. Let's move on to her body language. The video starts off with Solenn licking her lips, then she proceeds to eat the roasted chicken with no utensils, just her bare hands. This alone wants to set the tone of sensuality. As she pulls the chicken leg to dip it in the gravy, her breasts act a background for the scene. I can go on and on to prove how her body language screams F*CK ME!, but I'm sure that's been well established at this point. The entire video goes on with her eating the garlic butter chicken like she's having sex, with shots of her bending over, eating the chicken from above her head (somewhat similar to porn scenes of a woman giving oral sex), and other unnatural and unrealistic movements that no other woman on this planet has ever done while eating a piece of chicken.

The summation of all the factors in this video reveals what is truly being sold: SEX.

Not chicken, not fitness, and not Solenn. The advertisers behind Kenny Rogers merely used her body as an object of sexual desire, which gives me the impression that this video would have still successfully sent the sex message across even if they used any other hot, over-sexualized female celebrity in the country, like Ellen Adarna or Kim Domingo.

And what's even more disappointing about all this is that Kenny Rogers claims to be a family-friendly restaurant, and yet I've just seen this hyper-sexualized video playing on loop outside their restaurant last Saturday in PowerPlant Mall.

Now, why am I spending my valuable time to break down the message of this ad?

Because I am grieved and angered at how cheap the majority of the advertising industry have portrayed our bodies as women. They degrade our womanhood, crumple it up, force it in a box, and label it BEAUTY and SEX—as if that's all there is to every single one of us. From petrol to electric fan to canned tuna, it's always the half naked body of a female that is plastered next to a product while posing seductively—emphasizing all the more that women are nothing but sexual objects ready to be conquered and dominated.

Is there no other way to sell things these days other than using a woman's body as a commodity? Other than making her act like a hyper-sexualized piece of meat to garner hits and likes? I don't think so. If only advertisers exert more effort and not choose the easy and "guaranteed" tactic of "sex sells," there are so many other ways to creatively execute an ad campaign.


Some alternatives:

• Best of both worlds: Highlight the functional benefit of the product being GARLIC BUTTER flavor AND ROASTED CHICKEN in one dish. If the brand truly believes in their product, then they can easily use its functional attributes: the roast chicken's taste, nutritional benefits, and value for money. If this was the route they took, then there wouldn't have been a need to symbolize how "yummy" their chicken is with a half naked woman, over-sexualizing and objectifying herself. 
• Demystify a Garlic Butter Roast Chicken: Show uniqueness by breaking away from the traditional ways of seasoning a roast chicken; that other savory flavors can be used aside from the usual salt and pepper combination. They could've revealed more of the whole chicken in the video, and not the body of their endorser.

I am passionately compelled to speak up against this sort of ads, as this perpetuates the message that women are mere objects, and never subjects. Solenn here is stripped away of her humanity and personhood, and is portrayed doing something as mundane as eating (eating!!! I mean, come on, seriously guys) for the visual and sexual pleasure of the male gaze.

And we like to comfort ourselves by singing along with Beyoncè when she said girls run the world?

What a delusion.

Ads like this one greatly affect how women perceive themselves. It contributes to the conditioning that the value of women is ultimately based on how attractive they look to the male gaze, and their sexual functions.

"Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object—and most particularly an object of vision: just a sight."

—John Berger

As long as the media keeps celebrating girls who look like goddesses but have zero respect for others *cough*GeorginaWilsonAndPosse*cough*, as long as we edify women for having beautifully curated Instagram feeds but do nothing for the betterment of our world and the flourishing of our society, and as long as no one speaks out, then we continue to uphold the standards of beauty far above our characters. No wonder our society is slowly dwindling away in terms of morality, decency, and values. Every day, we are being sold the lie that all of these things that make up our core can take a backseat as long as our bodies, our looks, and our possessions are visually tantalizing. And the sad reality is, many are buying.

If this resonates with you, please share this article. As consumers, we can do something when advertisers and companies send us demeaning messages. We don't have to keep taking the hit. If we do, then just imagine the future our daughters and sons will live in. If we raise awareness and speak up against the hyper-sexualized representation of genders (Kenny Rogers also launched another "BTS" video where Solenn's husband, Nico Bolzico, objectifies himself too), then maybe this can make them think twice about the messages they convey to us before publishing any of their ads.