Carl's Jr. has a history of offending people with commercials featuring scantily clad women lustily biting into drippy hamburgers. The fast food chain, based primarily in western and southwestern states, is again under fire.
A pair of Utah twin sisters are the latest to take umbrage with Carl's' racy ads and have launched a social media campaign to encourage others join a boycott of the restaurant.
Lexie and Lindsay Kite, who both have PhDs in the study of media and body image and run the non-profit Beauty Redefined, say the ads damage sexuality for both sexes with their portrayal of women as objects for sexual pleasure. "They are only getting more and more sexually objectifying," Lexie Kite told the Salt Lake Tribune. "We know as well as anybody how much harm this does to men, to boys, to girls, to women, to relationships. It’s time to speak up."
The 28-year-old sisters are trying to raise awareness with the hashtags #CutTheCarls and #MoreThanMeat in a campaign that aims to get everyone, but especially men between the ages of 18 to 35 — the chain's key demographic — to pledge to stop eating at Carl's Jr. until the restaurant agrees to stop objectifying women in its ads.