Thursday, September 22, 2011
Portrayal of men in commercials
I was flipping through the T.V. the other day, and I saw this commercial. I thought nothing of it, but my dad over heard and then promptly said to me, "I hate this damn commercial" (at this point, I had not seen it before) after watching it I could see why it bothered my dad, it makes men really look like idiots! In the commercial the woman is on the phone talking about he diet, and she says she has eaten all these desserts. She then tells the woman she is on the phone that she always keeps it in the house. The husband than goes to look for all the desserts without realizing that she was talking about a yogurt. This is one of the most obvious commercial that makes men look really stupid. I guess advertisers do this because they want woman to feel that they are actually the dominate people in society, instead of the male being the dominate person in society. Most men think they are the latter!
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You make a comment in your blog that "advertisers do this because they want women to feel that they are actually the dominate people in society", who is to say that in this family she isn't the dominate one. Or even in society, why couldn't a woman be dominate? I don't see the advertiser trying to make men look stupid, i see the ad being comical. I think it would have been just the same if it was a women. Men have their dumb moments just as much as women do and it just so happens in this commercial he was having his dumb moment it seems.
ReplyDeleteThis image of the "doofy husband" seems to have become a recent trend in TV commercials. All the commercials I've seen that use this gag are for stereotypically "feminine" products (such as food and housewares), and I find it surprising and depressing that advertisers believe that they can use this sexist appeal to apply to the people who throughout history have been the overwhelming victims of sexism: women. This British ad for an oven (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrnOqwXWJDA) also features a "doofy husband," as well as the slogan, "it's so easy a man can do it." This commercial seems to me to just be an inverted version of the extremely sexist ads of the 1950s (such as this xerox ad featuring an incredibly incompetent woman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Spb0bo3IT0I&feature=related). These commercials featuring "doofy husbands" make me just as angry as commercials depicting sexist stereotypes of women, and I find them particularly problematic because they underscore this mainstream definition of a "feminist" as someone who hates men and believes that women should rule the world. I find this kind of ad particularly frustrating because it legitimizes this "feminazi" image that feminists constantly have to combat and which is completely antithetical to the actual message of feminism: that men and women are created inherently equal and that we should combat sexism-whether it be against men or women-in all its forms.
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