JibJab uses "naughty nurse" image to mock Clinton and idea of national health care plan

JibJab uses "naughty nurse" images to mock Clinton--and idea of national health care plan! Dude!

January 29, 2005 -- Internet video kings JibJab are currently marketing an extensive array of merchandise under the label "National Healthcare" featuring an image of President Clinton as a hospital patient with his arms around two provocatively dressed "naughty nurses" as he grabs their breasts. The cutting-edge message of the products is that Clinton likes to have sex with women who are not his wife. But this is not just a questionable reference to the former president's recent quadruple bypass surgery, his late mother's profession, or even the idea of a national health care system. It also perpetuates the "naughty nurse" stereotype that has long held nursing back, at a time of critical shortage, with the same young audience the profession needs to resolve the crisis that is threatening lives worldwide.

The products feature actual photo images of the heads of Clinton and two women placed onto figures that combine probably unrelated photos and color illustration. The "nurses" are wearing very short white dresses with their tops unbuttoned to reveal their cleavage and black lace bras. A large message appears at the bottom, presumably words from Clinton: "What'd I Do?" The products are marketed with the title "National Healthcare," as if to imply that Clinton's ill-fated 1990's health plan was basically designed to expand access to hot hospital chicks, oh, sorry, we think they're technically called "nurses." Available merchandise with this image includes the "Good to be in DC" video as well as t-shirts, caps, buttons, mousepads, stickers, totebags, coffee mugs, boxer shorts and women's thongs.

JibJab, a Santa Monica, California company run by brothers Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, produces a variety of web-based video and other gag products--including a children's book called "Are You Grumpy, Santa?" Through JibJab's web site, major entertainment world clients like Disney, and high profile exposure on television comedy shows, JibJab influences college-aged and internet-connected youth--an important population for nurses to reach with positive messages, not messages that nurses are some kind of in-hospital prostitute.

Center supporter Terri Polick effectively summarizes some basic problems with this image for nursing:

Jib Jab is a very popular website. The company did a parody about the election that was featured on the David Letterman Show and the Tonight Show, and won a lot of awards. That parody put these guys on the hip-cyberspace-map.

Their site is popular on college campuses and it was my two college age daughters who told me about it. They are upset about how their friends view nursing and say this isn't going to convince anyone to go into the nursing profession. The parody is making the rounds at fraternity parties--the guys love the little sex-kitten nurses--and at other campus events. The parody isn't a mainstream eyesore, but it is getting a lot of play with the same young people we are trying to get into nursing.

More broadly, linking easy sex so closely to the profession of nursing--to even the fantasy idea that working nurses are sexually available to patients--reinforces long-standing stereotypes. Those stereotypes continue to discourage practicing and potential nurses, foster sexual violence in the workplace, and contribute to a general atmosphere of disrespect, all of which works against the profession in the midst of a critical global shortage that threatens lives. Desexualizing the nursing image is an important part of building the strength the profession needs to meet the challenges of 21st Century health care.

In the United States, in 2005, what frat boys think clearly matters a great deal. We urge the Spiridellis brothers to reconsider this product.

Please join our letter-writing campaign asking JibJab to remove all nurse images from their videos and other merchandise.