“Woman as a poster boy for Father’s Day”: outvertising and LGBTphobic rhetorics in Brazilian advertising and homotransphobic commentariat

Abstract

This investigation is an outvertising study – a current, more inclusive and pro-LGBT advertising trend. More specifically, this paper analyzes two emblematic episodes in the history of outvertising in Brazil: a Bombril commercial from the 1990s that reveals the naturalized LGBTphobia of traditional advertising rhetoric, and the homotransphobic hate speech in comments made in social networks in the face of the recent controversy of the Natura’s Father’s Day campaign, starring a transsexual man. To support this investigation, analytical principles and procedures of rhetorical-discursive studies are utilized, articulating the rhetorical notions of ethos and pathos.