"The Perfect Boyfriend" is a spanker

I was recently pointed at this advert for a broadband service which is claimed to be as easy to use as a perfect, corporate, girl/boyfriend-in-a-box. Reluctant as I am to give more clicks to a company which thinks such tired heterosexist stereotypes are either funny or good advertising, there's one interesting thing about the ad: among the usual clichés about shoe shopping and hoovering, your clean-cut, mainstream "perfect boyfriend" also threatens teasingly to put you across his knee.

In terms of gender politics, I can't quite decide whether this is as demeaning as the rest of the advert, because it reinforces a normalised M/f sexual power dynamic without any acknowledgement of alternative roles, or not so bad, because it is intended to cater to female sexuality. Not only that, but non-mainstream sexuality - if the Perfect Boyfriend is designed to appeal to a female audience, then the advertisers clearly assume that M/f spanking will appeal a high percentage of that audience. It's interesting because it's very rare that you see spanking normalised in any sort of commercial context, let alone one which utilises the "humour" of exaggerated binary gender stereotypes.

The inclusion of kink and alternative sexuality in this context is surprising, and rather pleasing. No matter how sexist you find the rest of the advert, it seems to me that the presentation of spanking as something normal and mainstream enough to comprise a stereotype is at least a step in the right direction.