Glorifying Sexual Harassment

I saw a new car commercial on TV the other day that I found very disturbing. Basically, the premise of the commercial is that a nice guy pulls up next to an attractive women at a stop light in the same car. He tries to flirt with her in a nice way and she says "nice try" and drives away. He proceeds to follow her and continue to flirt with her while she puts obstacles in the road to try and get away from him. She finally does lose him, and the camera pans to her radio, which is playing the ELO song "Evil Woman".

What this plot boils down to is a poor guy is trying to flirt with a girl, who rejects his advances and is subsequently labelled as evil. The guy ignores her rejection, and follows her around town, an act that is clearly harassment. He is labelled as a poor victim of the evil woman who rejected him.

Stories like these are incredibly prevalent in pop culture, and are used to silence women's voices and imply that their desires are meaningless. By not succumbing to the man's advances, she is seen as doing something wrong, while the man's utter disregarding of the woman's "no" is seen as normal and perfectly OK. This narrative serves to further tell men in our society that only their desires matter, and that if they get rejected, they should simply try harder. The jump from this (portrayed as) innocent harassment to sexual assault and violence against women is not very far, and the connection between the evil woman and real world victim blaming is even shorter.