I *do* seem to be bothered less by women and girls doing stereotypically girly things when there aren’t men around to see ita , however, which skews my answer a bit in favor of the last option… I don’t know if you’ve been in an equivalent situation where it’s all gay men in the room but it’d be interesting to know if you are bothered slightly less when there’s no straight “audience” to impress.

In a weak attempt to wrest this post back on topic, I dislike pink not because it offends my retinas but because it’s sooo female-coded. Pink clothes actually look decent on me but I tend to avoid them. Also, I like using good detergent, but I would avoid one that was marketed at me like omgyouareamotherbuythis! If ads would stop pushing those ideas so damn hard I would probably buy more pink stuff and buy their detergent.

It’s interesting how ads have embraced the ‘strong, bread winner’ woman… but only as long as she also does all of the household necessities too.

I suppose the representation of women only housecleaning, etc. is a major pet peeve of mine.. all the ‘baby come back,’ mop commercials and the radio commercials of how ‘cindy,’ can have lunch with her friends, read a book, go get that abortion (okay maybe not this one), have a life- basically, now that she’s not stuck at home cleaning her shower thanks to a machine that spits cleaner everywhere…

thank god men have made robots to do what women have to do! now they have time for social lives and educations!

I will say this, though, if I can overshare and wander off topic somewhat; for some reason Carson Kressley (I believe it is he in the ad) really just gets on my last good nerve, as do many others with public personas that are similar; I guess I choose “public persona” because I don’t know him personally, and in part because I’m sure there’s an element of performance there.

But I’ve always wondered if it was genuine dislike, or if there’s an element of internalized homophobia on my part. It seems like the farther away my coming out in high school gets from me, chronologically, the less I seem to like the “snarky nelly” performance and the more I seem to want to attach myself to the “normal guy” performance… which, to bring it back to the original topic, occasionally means identifying myself with the hegemonically masculine despite my opposition to it as an institution.

I still do my own bloody laundry, however, and will continue to do so into the forseeable future.

Not the Gwen couldn’t have been somewhat clearer, I guess, but in the context of her other posts on this blog it seemed pretty obvious to me that all of the stuff mentioned here about stereotypes and “true manliness” was strongly implied.

Then there’s “Sky Mall” — this post reminds me of the second image here.

Consider, that the appearance of a man in the ad would contribute, at least, to the deconstruction of laundry as solely woman’s work… but interestingly, the only way to do that is to show a “normal man” doing laundry or being pictured “in the context of laundry” (lord, that’s a silly statement now that I look at it, haha). Anyhow, part of the frustration, I think, was that rather than the image of a “normal” man (which other men could identify with?) we got a “feminine-coded” man because he’s gay and associated with Queer Eye (a show which has its own associations with good grooming and “metrosexuality,” etc).

Of course, the question that brings up is: how can we deconstruct the gendering of things without buying into the false binary of gender advertisers give us? The only way to make “laundry” seem male is to make it hegemonically male, and that’s silly… it only reinforces the idea that if something is to be attractive to men, that it has to be for men… it puts the burden on the product to be gender-appropriate, rather than on individuals (or culture) to challenge their gender coding.

Granted, the thrust of the post is a point about gender stereotypes/sexism, but acknowledging that it’s a gay man advertising cleaning products, in my view, acknowledge the homophobia/gay stereotypes, eg, of course, it’s a gay man, they do womanly things like cleaning.

Meh, I guess it could have been clearer though,

It just seems like a funny line to be advertising with.

Come on down to Jack’s Burger Fiesta! Regular fast-food prices guaranteed!

I know it’s not what you meant, but this does imply that gay men aren’t really men (you were excited that there was a man and then you realized that, oh wait, it’s one of them). There is a man on the Clorox website. If you want to talk about the fact that there are a lot of stereotypes about the kind of man that he is, do that.