‘What To Expect’ Posters Impregnate Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Banks, Brooklyn Decker, Cameron Diaz…

By  · Published on January 26th, 2012

‘What To Expect’ Posters Impregnate Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Banks, Brooklyn Decker, Cameron Diaz, and Anna Kendrick

There’s something great about the female-centric advertising coming out of a generic comedy based on an advice book for mothers about to deliver a bun fresh from the oven. The marketing team has faith in the women, and Lionsgate has faith in a woman-driven adult comedy. It’s clearly propelled by the success of Bridesmaids, but the more perverse secondary effect that that raucous comedy had on the studio math world is that crass women now equal box office gold.

And thus, the posters for What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Again, it’s great to see women used so overtly for marketing without oversexualizing them (or, using their image months after their being sexualized?), but shoving bad lines with buzzwords in them reeks of desperation to appear edgy without actually having to be edgy.

They won’t set back the women’s movement or anything, but they’re at least 10% heinous. Check them out for yourself:

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The one featuring Jennifer Lopez is so innocuous that it almost doesn’t belong with the others. Then there’s Elizabeth Banks’s pretend cursing complete with #$&#$*&#$s and Cameron Diaz talking about her rack and getting “knocked up”, but the worst offender might be Brooklyn Decker flirt-smirking into the camera as if to ask, “Hey, did you notice the word Horny right next to my face? Did you? It’s there…isn’t it sexy?”

Real women can be edgy without being cutesy or pointing out how edgy they’re being.

On the bright side, these posters act as a warning: an adult human being says “Plus I’m, like, crazy horny,” in it. So maybe it’s best to stay away.

Also, the marketing team and the producers should know they’ve just alienated anyone who’s ever had trouble peeing on a stick and remained sensitive about it.

This bad boy from Lionsgate shoots out the birthing canal and into theaters May 11. On the optimistic front, it’s from director Kirk Jones so either he’ll be able to infuse his talent into the proceedings or it’ll be a tragic case of the man behind the brilliant Waking Ned Devine slumming it in something vile. So it goes.

Source: iVillage

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