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.
Men don't care. We're too busy carrying the ball.
I am not a victim, and I will especially never be a victim of the effette, metrosexual, cake-boys that run the media.
I don't give a damn how often Hollyweird or Madison Ave. types portray straight, white, males as the root of all evil, corruption, ineptitude, etc., because I know they are using cameras, and lenses, and film, and videotape equipment, and audio recording equipment, and broadcast equipment, and television sets, all of which were envisioned, designed, and built by straight, white, males.
They bash us because they love us, and they know they wouldn't be $h!t without us.
It's this male-bashing that is causing a lot of unnecessary antagonism between genders.
The medical office personnel who will occupy the space (women) walk in regularly and marvel at what we have built.
On the way to work, I drive by an enormous new elevated freeway interchange also being built by idiot men.
While we are talking about idiot men, I'd like to bring up my favorite fact. Women suffered sagging breasts for thousands of years until a MAN finally designed and built them the first bra.
I'm sick to death at men being put down. We built the whole civilized world and damn near every convenience whining women rely upon to avoid the backbreaking work of their ancestors.
I say ship them off to their own continent. A continent of nothing but whining, self-absorbed women would be at each other's throats within days.
"Men don't whine all day about how they're being portrayed, because we're too busy doing useful stuff."
We've also kept our sense of humor and may be the last social group on earth that is willing to laugh at itself. Flame on, indeed.
My favorite are the Expedia.com ads - the contrast between the sniveling, simpering pathetic males and the strong, decisive, self assured females in those ads is unequaled.
Someone is just NOW noticing this? Been true for a long time. Someone has just now developed the cojones to say something.
Turn the TV off and have a real life. Hollywood, you're fired.
Yeah, but even that's got to come from somewhere...
I have 50 bucks that says most of the offending ads are created by homosexual men.
I think the Progressive ads are particularly vitriolic against men. They are not funny.
So far as I can tell, the only company that had a clue about this type of BS was Dell.....when they ran their "Intern" series of ads they would alternate between making the boys look stupid and the girls looking stupid.
That was savvy enough that I noticed it.
Obviously, there's a conditioning process going on with these idiotic commercials we see on the idiot box and that is the incessant message that if someone's going to do something goofy, politically incorrect, and generally foolish it's most likely going to be a white guy. Likewise, the cool-headed, all knowing antithesis of the dimbulb white guy is either a woman or black (M or F) and it seems as though the intended effect is to leave the current generation of young TV watchers that what they see on a commercial is real life when nothing could be further from the truth.
Being a businessman, I've been very fortunate to work with several hardworking, bright women and blacks but I know for a fact that as a group, white males are still dominant in business because of the work ethic and values brought to the marketplace. A lot of factors contribute to this situation (which can be debated ad nauseum) but in my estimation white males need to re-discover who they really are as well as their heritage and histroy.
Well, I know that... I was just trying to make a point how feminists view men and the world.
I know, but when I read the comment, I thought about where the stuff comes from, and how they get it, which often requires props (read "porn"), which itself often depicts women being subservient to male desires. Talk about the irony!
Don't know, But the little rascals had the "He-Man Women Haters Club."
Therein lies the rub. Couples should act like a team because it's the best way to accomplish your goals. However, many women have never been exposed to team activities in their youth as most men are. It has taken me ten years to get my wife to understand the concept of team work. Sure she's been on a team at work, but it didn't prepare her for the close dependencies we share when we are equals.
She always thought of us as two - rather than one. Now, through some tough times, she has started to understand that the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts. The part is in the whole and the whole is in the part. Now that this is understood, our relationship has grown to proportions I had never imagined.
There is a Mike's hard lemonade commercial (I think that is the name) that makes me crack up because it is so ridiculous.
Some player kind of guy walks by an attractive blonde sitting at the bar talking with (presumably) her date. He does this three times saying rather cheesy pickup lines each time. On the third occasion, the guy finally grows a pair and says "Alright, you have to the count of three ..." but before he can finish, the woman has head-butted the boor. And they both go back to sippin their hard lemonade. Yeah, like I am going to believe that would be possible in real life.
I guess this group already has a discussion of that commercial.
http://www.mensactivism.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/30/0410234&mode=flat
Ha ha.
Seconds later, Doof is at it again, this time spraying a hornet's nest with the garden hose. D'oh! But Wife saves the day with her quick thinking, her maternal patience, and her internet provider.
Yuk yuk.
I wouldn't buy that internet service if I had to FReep with two tin cans and a string!
Notice how a lot of the judges on TV dramas are black women?
Send them to Russia where they would learn to appreciate America, and American men. Bring the Russian women here who would appreciate a good American man.
Quote of the day.
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