Comments on: Smart Men Do Their Own Home Repairs

By: Sarah Smith

Sarah Smith — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 22:51:57 +0000

I don’t think so the ad is very appealing. I agree that there are women that hate to do those jobs and I am one of it.

By: Rita

Rita — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 04:38:57 +0000

The line “while you’re at work” directed at the husband paired with the woman being at home also assumes that men work all day and women stay home taking care of the house and… making tea.

By: Traitorfish

Traitorfish — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 06:06:10 +0000

I agree- not only does it exploit male insecurities by framing successful relationships as dependent upon never-ending performance of conventional masculinity (as opposed to, like, talking and stuff?), but it entirely erases female agency, as if women are just robots programmed to fall helplessly onto the manliest man in the immediate vicinity.

By: Baxter

Baxter — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 20:32:35 +0000

did they seriously go there? really? did they just do what i think they did?

By: T

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 16:38:23 +0000

I’m amazed by so many of the comments above…

By: Pauline

Pauline — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 05:41:07 +0000

I’m Australian and it took about 3 watches of one of those ads and having my mum actually stop and rewind tivo to play it again for me to actually get the message.

I guess when I first saw it I just refused to see the obvious sexist message and was trying to look for something more intelligent instead.

But no, now I see it here on SocImages, I know it’s as dumb as my brain refused to believe.

I think it was the fact that they were showing how simple it is to use the sealing stuff, so I was trying to figure out why the woman wasn’t just doing it herself. And then the message at the end, I thought was actually directed to women as a ‘do you really want someone strange in your house doing this when you could do it yourself?’. But as I said, I was trying to give it an intelligent message when it clearly doesn’t have one. Which in itself just goes to show how ineffective the ad actually is.

By: Just me

Just me — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 19:56:00 +0000

No, Liz, there are many of us Australians who actually care to analyse the media we’re consuming, rather than ascribing our laziness or thoughtlessness to a perk of national identity.

By: Molly W.

Molly W. — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 19:19:13 +0000

Huh. I don’t much like doing housework while someone else is sitting there not doing it (there’s a recipe for resentment!), but I’d rather as soon do it when I’m home alone than when there’s someone else around.

Shortly after my husband and I moved in together, we divvied up who does what, so there’s not much waiting for the other person to do it. Except for cat vomit — we’ve both perfected the skill of Not Seeing It in hopes the other person will crack first.

But we joke about that — take bets when we leave town about how many piles of cat vomit we’ll find when we get home — so it’s more a source of humor than discord.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 19:06:15 +0000

Yeah. I guess I didn’t get “Aussie humor” with this one, either:

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/tag/nation-australia/page/3/

Maybe the problem is that you aren’t taking it too seriously.

(And “you” is not all of Australia, of course.)

By: missdisco

missdisco — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 17:33:02 +0000

Now i’ve seen that, i’ll never not see it.

By: Melanie

Melanie — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:29:18 +0000

Of course the handy man is more virile than the husband. He has a phallic caulking gun that can squirt into accomodating spaces. Eesh.

By: Michaela

Michaela — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 04:59:29 +0000

don’t rely*

By: Michaela

Michaela — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 04:58:37 +0000

I’d like to counter that actually. I’m Australian as well, and I love dry Aussie humour, but still think this is blatantly conforming to negative gender tropes.

We have so many funny ads and TV shows that don’t relying on demeaning stereotypes and bartering for a woman’s hand, that to lump this in the same category of actual ‘Aussie Humour’ seems to devalue that institution.

By: Liz

Liz — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 04:31:49 +0000

Just goes to show you missed the point of Aussie humour.We know how to laugh at ourselves and most women know how to use a caulking gun.Don’t take it too seriously, we don’t!

By: Michaela

Michaela — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 04:18:59 +0000

Well I was super excited to see a lot of people as gobsmacked as me. When I first saw it my partner and I just looked at each other going ‘did they really try that?!!!’

I think, like K.E. said, there is definitely a double entendre with the ‘do it yourself tag’ and I think everyone has done a good job deconstructed how loathesome these ads are.

Thanks for reaffirming my faith in an intelligent humanity.