Better Together ad starts Twitter storm, spawns meme: meet #PatronisingBTLady

This week the lid was lifted on a new ad created by the team behind Better Together, a campaign dedicated to keeping Scotland as part of the UK in the upcoming referendum. (You can watch the ad for yourself here.)

The ad is clearly targeting female voters, as it features a woman pondering over some of the key issues surrounding the debate while she drinks tea. It all sounds rather normal, right? Well, supporters of Scottish independence (and many other commentators) don’t think the ad really paints women in a particularly positive light and have since branded the woman ‘Patronising Better Together Lady’.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, this label has taken on a life of its own on Twitter, spawning the #PatronisingBTLady meme, a parody Twitter account and a whole load of other funny things to highlight the kind of ridiculous ad from Better Together.

So is the ad REALLY that bad? Well, take a look for yourself. Many have suggested it’s not all that offensive, but we couldn’t help but cringe when she reveals that her husband asked her to engage in a discussion about the referendum and she said, ‘it’s too early to be discussing politics, eat your cereal!’ How stupid of him to think a woman would care about politics! Or when she refers to one of the key political commentators as ‘that guy off the telly.’

The suggestion she’s a middle-aged woman with kiddies is about as subtle as a breeze block to the face too, as the camera pans rather dramatically over juice, toys and crayons. We appreciate the effort from Better Together to secure the support of female voters by appealing to some of the key things that dictate their lives, but assuming women are only concerned with tea, kids and making food and not thinking, engaging in conversation and just having a Google around for a bit more info about what is essentially a pretty important decision is, well, extremely patronising.

But aside from the more serious points raised, we have a few other questions to ask too. Like, why are her facial expressions SO PRONOUNCED? And why is there so much insane tilt-shifting going on?

But anyway, that’s too much thinking for us for one day! Back to drinking tea, being concerned, but not knowing what the hell’s going on and taking a look at some of the best tweets from the ‘incident’…

Some people even brought in our favourite old memes to make even more an impact…

Image via @yeswithdex.

Becca Caddy

2 comments

  • Nicely shot and well acted, but I agree that it’s patronising. In fact it’s very strange really. Does nothing to address the main issues – it’s basically just scare mongering, saying that a yes vote is gambling with your own kids’ future. I happen to agree with the Better Together campaign but this kind of negative campaigning does them no favours. Do they really think that middle class, middle aged women aren’t capable of processing some of the bigger issues around currency, economy etc. without it coming back to it being a risk with their children’s futures.

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