The website GoDaddy.com released a series of tame television commercials, each with a warning label: “Web Content Unrated.” Inevitably feeling curious, I went to the main website to view their “Too Hot for TV” commercials, each with the label “Hot” with a fire icon tagged next to the title. The thumbnail commercial still previews are all of shots not previously aired on television. These shots are “sexy” sneak previews of what is to come in the full version of the commercials, each shot featuring a woman – a “GoDaddy Girl” – in a compromising, sexually suggestive or revealing position. Even the titles seem to be sexual innuendos when accompanied by these photos, with names like “Speeding,” “Baseball,” “Genie,” “One More Thing,” and “Shower.” The commercials themselves are blatantly sexualized, with women stripping, pole dancing, baring their cleavage, making suggestive comments, and essentially selling their product with their bodies. In addition, women in the commercials vie for the attention of the Chairman of the company Bob Parsons, using their bodies to try to gain the “esteemed” title of “GoDaddy Girl.” In these commercials, the cameras use their gaze to focus on various aspects of the women’s bodies, zooming in slow motion on the tank tops with “GoDaddy.com” emblazoned across the breast, using different angles to best use the body to their advantage. The commercials use society’s fascination with the woman’s body to sell their product and they, in essence, objectify the women in order to do it with the justification that they want to be a “GoDaddy Girl.”
Upon opening the “Too Hot for TV” link, the first video that plays is entitled “Speeding.” It is by far the most racy and overtly sexual commercial of them all. A female police officer on a motorcycle pulls over a speeding convertible. The officer steps off the motorcycle and saunters as the camera follows her “walk and shake” her body as she moves. As she recognizes the speeding driver as a GoDaddy girl, her voices changes to a more recognized seductive way of speaking, her velvet voice cooing out the words, “I love GoDaddy.com domain names!” as she leans over toward the driver, a button on her blouse popping open. She proclaims she wants to be a GoDaddy Girl and rips off her vest. The camera lingers on her from afar as she tears off her pants, and it repeats this scene from several different angles as the music begins to boom. She is wearing a GoDaddy tank top, police belt complete with gun, fishnet stockings, and stiletto boots. She saunters toward the front of the car and, like a bad 80’s music video, she crawls onto the hood of the car, shaking her head and hips provocatively at the woman driver, now identified as Danica Patrick, an Indy race car driver and PlayBoy model. The GoDaddy hopeful caresses herself repeatedly as the camera changes angles, gazing up at her from below as she gazes down. Danica tells her she has what it takes but the hopeful still writes her a ticket, cooing, “I do what I do – very well.” She strolls away and straddles her motorcycle as the GoDaddy.com billboard winks. This commercial uses the woman’s body to sell the product because the camera almost always remains set upon her chest adorned with the GoDaddy.com logo, exemplifying Brost’s argument on camera gaze. This also seems to suggest that the GoDaddy hopeful was using herself to perform or masquerade herself as what she thinks an ideal GoDaddy Girl should be.
“Baseball” is another blatantly and almost embarrassingly sexualized commercial full of innuendos and over-exposed cleavage. The panel of judges, composed of the Chair people of the company, asks each GoDaddy Girl in turn whether or not they’ve “enhanced,” to which they all (except Danica) reply “no.” It is obvious that the women have had breast augmentations, and therefore have enhanced, but this play on words never had to do with breast enhancements, but enhancing their image with GoDaddy.com domain names. The camera gaze and use of the word “enhance” makes the viewer believe it is in fact about breast enhancements, and the judges are all astounded that the women reply that they are not enhanced. Danica explains that she’s used GoDaddy.com to enhance her image, and subsequently removes her jacket to reveal the GoDaddy.com tank top, and the other GoDaddy Girls follow. They shake their “non-enhanced” breasts at the judges, bombarding them with the GoDaddy logo; but they don’t seem to mind. They all have raised eyebrows and wide eyes, watching every movement. One judge even asks one of the girls, “Quien es tu papi?” or “Who is your daddy?” in Spanish. This play on words with a disguised sexual innuendo shows the inappropriate relationship between the judge and women, the judges’ gazes focused on their chests, not their eyes. They use the body as a marketing tool with some shock value to appeal to a certain type of people to persuade them to use their product.
The next commercial, “Genie,” opens to two female golfers in skirts walking and talking along the green. One of them picks up a genie lamp and rubs it as a man in a lawn chair appears with two scantily clad women fanning him. The man, Bob Parsons, Chairman of GoDaddy.com, offers the woman three wishes. She wishes to never miss another putt and the genie snaps his fingers, granting a wish. The second woman is changed into a much more revealing GoDaddy tank top and the first complains, “I didn’t wish for that!” as Bob smugly grins as he lasciviously says, “That was my wish.” She continues with her next two wishes and asks if her friend could receive the same deal to which Bob suggestively replies, “She didn’t rub the bottle,” followed by a comedic drum roll. While this commercial is much tamer than “Speeding,” there are new problematic scenarios presented. For instance, the introduction of a dominant male to the scene alters the tension and purpose of the commercial. In “Speeding,” it is blatantly obviously aimed toward a male audience while this commercial is more subtly aimed toward a similar stereotype. The way that Bob is shown actually ogling the woman’s body is a factor that is absent from the previous commercial, although it is assumed that men are ogling her body because that is the purpose of the actions portrayed in the commercial. “Speeding” is a more voyeuristic view of women while in “Genie,” everything is experienced firsthand by the only male in the scene.
In “One More Thing,” the female police officer from “Speeding” has apparently, through her “efforts,” become a GoDaddy Girl. She is seated with other GoDaddy Girls alongside Bob Parsons as they play poker. The GoDaddy Rookie, now identified as Vanessa Rousso, Team PokerStars Pro, comments on how easy it is to be a GoDaddy Girl. Bob Parsons retorts, smiling, “Well… There is one more thing…” his voice trailing as the music ascends, the camera turning to Danica Patrick as she begins removing her jacket. The camera turns to several other women stripping, revealing their chests and GoDaddy tank tops. All at once, the music stops and Danica comments, “You have to be willing to wear this tank top!” The poker dealer and Bob Parsons have been looking on, smiling and Parsons comments, “At GoDaddy.com we’re inexpensive, not cheap.” This is comical because the commercials in and of themselves utilize uncreative, cheap representations of women to sell domain names. In this particular commercial, the camera is again fixated on the women’s upper halves as they show off the GoDaddy logo on their tops. This commercial uses humor and sexual suggestiveness to gain the attention of the viewer, while capturing and holding their attention with the women stripping. The viewer is bombarded with the logo, associating the web site with sexy women. It is a clever rouse, but not an unfamiliar one; many commercials utilize the idea that “if you use our product, this could be yours.”
Following along with this idea of possession, the next commercial in the series, “Shower,” shows three teenage boys bragging about their new domain name and the power they have from getting said domain from the GoDaddy registrar. They are controlling Danica, making her shower for the fifth time that day as they watch intently. Danica comments that she doesn’t know why she is doing these things and doesn’t seem to know that the boys are voyeuristically watching her. They then add another woman to the shower and together the women figure out that someone is controlling them. In the next scene, the boys are beating themselves up as the two women are shown lying on a bed with a laptop, controlling them now with their new GoDaddy domain name. The juxtaposition of control in this commercial is interesting; it begins with the males as dominant and ends with the females as dominant. This gives power to the GoDaddy Girl name, but they women are still being used as sexual objects to convey their message.
This set of commercials is the newest line of misogynistic portrayals of women as presented by GoDaddy.com. The site describes the GoDaddy Girls as “sexy and seductive,” and next to each woman’s picture is a blurb as to why it’s “great” to be a GoDaddy Girl. These women are objectified consistently from every angle in the GoDaddy.com commercials. The women are fixated upon becoming the image of a GoDaddy Girl so they masquerade around, becoming that image through donning a mask. The camera lingers on different parts of their bodies from different angles to best capture the attention of the widest audience possible through the sexualization of women and shock value. The roles of males in these commercials differ, but for the most part the men are dominant with voyeuristic intent, watching the women from afar, controlling them. It complicates the aesthetic view of the body, making it purely sexual with little to no other value accompanying it. These commercials are obscene, crass, vulgar and offensive to women, and although the commercial creators try to justify their actions with, “They want to be a GoDaddy Girl!” they still portray a completely unnecessarily perverted view of the body with the hopes of profiting off it.
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