Search results for embed

Miguel pointed out that AskMen.com collected a list of “worst male-bashing ads,” all of which represent men as morons or useless oafs. Here are some of them:

1st for Women, a South African auto insurance company that only insures women:

A Domino’s ad in which the wife laughs at her husband’s sexual overtures:

A Sony Cyber-shot ad that depicts men as a horse’s ass (it’s the first clip; for some reason there are some FedEx clips afterward):

Men as easily manipulated by flirty women:

These might be useful for a discussion of masculinity and portrayals of men as idiots and morons, especially regarding family life, which serves to reinforce the idea that men can’t be trusted to cook or clean or care for children because they’ll just mess it up. Although it doesn’t come up in these ads, it’s also good to bring in the class element we see in shows like “King of Queens,” “The Simpsons,” “According to Jim,” and “Married with Children,” which all have working-class, generally pot-bellied idiot husbands married to smart, gorgeous women who sigh and put up with their childish behavior.

Also see the earlier post of a Roomba ad that portrays the husband as a literal ass (this ad also made it into the AskMen list).

Thanks, Miguel!

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Daniel F. (who has a blog here) sent us this Temptation cookie ad from Mexico, which plays on the idea that men fear independent, strong women:

Daniel’s translation:

Host: Gentlemen, what we feared has happened. You have the new Mexican woman; she is more independent and gives more importance to what she wants.
First man: But, does she cool our beers?
Host: No, never again. And that’s not all. She also wants us to take our children to the pediatrician.
Second man: What’s that?
Host: Pediatrician is the doctor for kids.
Second man: No, the other thing, “children.”
Host: Children are the little people who call us dad.
Third man: And what is that she has in her hand?
Host: This, my friends, is the new Temptation cookie, because the new Mexican woman has her pleasures without guilt and, what’s worse, she doesn’t share.
Woman: Gentlemen, I’m leaving. I have things to do.
Narrator: There’s a new woman and she has new cookies.

The ad also connects sex and food and, in fact, replaces sexual pleasure (and men) with food, a theme Jean Kilbourne mentions in “Killing Us Softly 3”–that women are encouraged to use food to replace sex or console themselves when they have romantic troubles.

It’s also interesting that the ad plays on the idea of old-fashioned Mexican men who expect women to serve them.

Thanks, Daniel!

Here is a 5-minute clip (found here) on representations of female athletes in the media. It is from the documentary “Playing Unfair.”

Thanks to John for mentioning this documentary in a comment.

What is the relationship between the denigration of men as men and patriarchy? So long as we buy into the idea that we can’t expect men to be good partners or fathers, we will tolerate women’s responsibility for the second shift and their placement on the mommy track at work. So the Homer Simpson-esque sitcom dads and the Jackass teenagers, while incredibly degrading to men, also serve to perpetuate patriarchy.

Case in point:

Jessica at Feministing writes that this ad:

…feed[s] into the sexist idea that men deserve a cookie for being halfway decent human beings, but it also denigrates men by suggesting that they’re animals, unable to resist any ass that that happens to pass their way.

Another excellent example here.

The trouble is… people will answer them.

Found here thanks to commenter Phili-Chan! From an Australian show featuring Charles Firth.

The “MANtage”:

The comedy troupe goes by “Barats and Bereta.” Enjoy their youtube site.

Thanks Kyle S.!

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

I really like these commercials and the way they, rather humorously and lightheartedly, play on what it feels like to be the object of stereotyping.

My favorite:

A montage:

It’s too bad the show didn’t take. They managed to use the plight of cavemen to illustrate the plight of all the different marginalized groups in our society, from Native Americans, to women, to gays and lesbians. I liked it, despite the bad writing and poor production quality.

This “Onslaught” ad by Dove has garnered a lot of attention and positive press:

The idea, of course, is that we need to protect our daughters from the images that may harm their self-esteem or make them uncomfortable about their bodies. A great message, no doubt.

However, corporate activism usually has limits and contradictions (as do most things in life, really). Miguel sent us this ad spoof that points out that many of the images the Dove ad says we should be protecting our daughters from are actually used in Axe ads–and Axe is owned by Unilever, the same company that owns Dove.

So Unilever manages to target both markets–those who respond to sexualized images and those who find them harmful–through different brands. This is a common tactic–because large multinational companies own so many different brands, they can market to many different groups of consumers; when we reject one product because of its production process or advertising and buy another instead, there’s a very good chance we’re buying from the same corporate entity, just a different brand name.

As one blogger nicely put it:

It’s a parent’s responsibility to make sure the damaging messages they themselves produce don’t reach your kids.

That is, Dove is telling parents to protect their kids, as if Dove CARES, but Dove’s parent company is producing those very same messages. (It’s kind of like a single corporation owning a beer company and running Alcoholics Anonymous. How very convenient for both.)

A commenter pointed out that Greenpeace made an ad based on Dove’s “Onslaught” commercial that brings up the effects of palm oil production in the destruction of forests in Indonesia:

Thanks, Dangger!

NEW: There is a terrific post at Moment of Choice about one woman’s experience auditioning for a Dove Real Woman commercial. From the post:

Under the guise of looking for women who felt truly comfortable in their own skin, no matter what they looked like, they asked us to bare all or most of it, to prove just how comfortable we really were…A young peppy assistant demonstrated how they wanted us to shake our hands in the air like we just didn’t care and do a full 360 for the camera and male judging panel.

It’s a fascinating inside look at a process most of us never take part in, and reinforces the fact that corporate activism often covers an awful lot of business-as-usual behind the scenes.