Posted on 06/22/2004 2:31:47 PM PDT by Clear Rivers
By Kate Santich | The Orlando Sentinel
You've seen him in TV commercials. He's the guy who can't open a pickle jar or take care of his kids, the husband raised by wolves, the balding, portly fellow who leaps for joy now that a pill has solved his impotence. He's the one scalded by hot coffee and hit in the crotch with a bowling ball, though he doesn't seem to mind.
In the powerful dominion of television advertising, this hapless, sloppy, beer-drinking punch line is the modern American man.
And critics say he's getting more than his fair share of abuse.
"If anything like this was happening to blacks or women or Jews, it would be considered a moral crime," says Warren Farrell, a California author and men's rights advocate. "We're being flooded with advertising in which either a male is being hit by a female, or the man is simply the jerk."
Farrell, author of "The Myth of Male Power," is one of a small but growing number of men -- and a few women -- protesting what they consider sexist, stereotypical and even mean-spirited ads. Male-bashing, they claim, is the last politically safe perversion.
"At this point in time, if advertisers served up women the same way that guys are treated, it would be world war," says Steve Feinberg, chief creative officer at the Seiden Group, a New York ad agency. "Advertising has cycled its way through that. Right up through the early 1980s, (the message to women) was 'Spend all day obsessing over whether you have the right toilet bowl cleaner, because that's how you define yourself.' But you can't do that anymore."
Late last year, a 40-year-old New Hampshire engineer and father named Richard Smaglick launched the Society for the Prevention of Misandry in the Media -- misandry being the seldom-heard counterpart to misogyny. Among his first efforts was a boycott of the clients of advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi because of a spot it produced for Wyeth FluMist. In the ad, we see Mom laid up in bed, felled by the virus, and Dad in charge of the household -- much to the glee of the kids, who march off to school in a snowstorm dressed as if for a luau. Alas, poor Dad can't manage his own children.
On a Web site for the Men's Activism News Network (MANN), readers have compiled a list of companies to boycott for their allegedly male-bashing ads. Ironically, the list includes perhaps the ultimate macho-man vehicle, the Hummer, which aired a spot showing a woman behind the wheel and a tagline that read: "Threaten men in a whole new way."
Imagine the fallout, a man said in a post, if the roles were reversed, and a man were encouraged to "threaten women in a whole new way."
It's a point well-taken, says Matt Campbell, one of the site's administrators. "To get a sense of why there is a group of men finding the state of affairs so outrageous, just switch the gender roles for a minute and see if it would still be funny. Imagine having a laugh track when a woman's genitals are attacked."
Ironically, most of the offending ads are created by men.
"They think it's their way to be feminists. They think women want to see men as dogs and pigs, and everybody can have a good laugh," says Barbara Lippert, critic for the trade publication Adweek.
And if there hasn't been an outcry until now, some advocates say, it's only because men who complain are labeled wimps. Their masculinity is questioned. But until large numbers do protest, until companies are hit in the pocketbook, they're not likely to change.
Awwwwwwww...[blush] : )
There has been a trend in the media that encourages male-bashing - commercials where men are made to look like idiots, etc. Those stupid soup commercials come to mind (the one where the woman is always condescending to the guy saying "then you learned to ride a two-wheeler" or ridiculing the kind of shirt he's wearing).
It's as though liberals/feminists think that making fools of men will make up for the way women have been treated in history. It won't.
I really, really hate this male-bashing thing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.