{"id":31119,"date":"2011-01-05T10:00:06","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T15:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=31119"},"modified":"2013-11-19T04:42:46","modified_gmt":"2013-11-19T09:42:46","slug":"making-it-manly-or-how-to-sell-a-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/01\/05\/making-it-manly-or-how-to-sell-a-car\/","title":{"rendered":"Making it Manly, or How to Sell a Car"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Jezebel<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nMost of us are clear on the idea that patriarchies are defined by sexism: the valuing of men over women. \u00a0In our American patriarchy, however, this is matched and perhaps even\u00a0superseded\u00a0by something called androcentrism: the valuing of all-things-masculine over all-things-feminine. \u00a0We know we live in an androcentric society because masculinized things (playing sports, being a doctor, being self-sufficient) are imagined to be good for everyone (we encourage both our sons and daughters to do these things), but feminized things (playing with dolls, being a nurse, and staying at home to raise children) are considered to be good only for women.<\/p>\n

This means that men are teased and ostracized for doing feminized things, as we have demonstrated\u00a0in advertising for\u00a0McCoy Crisps<\/a>,\u00a0Hungry Man<\/a>,\u00a0Solo<\/a>,\u00a0Chevy<\/a>,\u00a0dog food<\/a>,\u00a0Miller beer<\/a>,\u00a0beef jerky<\/a>,\u00a0cell phones<\/a>, Dockers<\/a>, the VW Beetle<\/a>, and alcohol (see\u00a0here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a> and\u00a0here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

This tendency towards androcentrism means, also, that companies can count on both women and men buying masculinized products, but only women buying feminized products. \u00a0It’s smart business, then, to masculinize everything. \u00a0In a\u00a0New York Times<\/em> article, for example, Patton reports<\/a> that Mercedes masculinized its SLK in response to a finding that “too many” women were buying it, something that threatened to feminize the car:<\/p>\n

Mercedes says that 52 percent of the registered owners of first-generation SLK’s are women and 48 percent are men; the company would prefer the figures to be more on the order of 60 percent men and 40 percent women\u2026<\/p>\n

The standard thinking in the industry is that lots of women will buy a car that appeals to men, but many men — certainly those who wish to avoid the girlie-men label — won’t buy one associated with women.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This logic helps explain the, admittedly tongue-in-cheek (I think), hyper-masculinization of the Honda Odyssey in this commercial, sent in by Nancy N. She writes:<\/p>\n

The choice of the black car, the music, and lighting all direct the viewer to think, “this isn’t just a mini-van, this is a\u00a0man-van, and you aren’t a pansy if you buy it.” \u00a0 …[It is]\u00a0“technology packed “…\u00a0with distinctly harder edges. Overall, Honda is\u00a0trying very hard to override the notion of a “mom car” to sell to a\u00a0broader audience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

See also:\u00a0\u201chow to give the perfect man hug\u201d and \u201chow I sit on the bus\u201d<\/a>. \u00a0And for more examples of androcentrism, see our posts on the phenomenon in \u00a0sports (see\u00a0here<\/a> and\u00a0here<\/a>),\u00a0cartoons<\/a>, schools (see\u00a0here<\/a> and\u00a0here<\/a>), and\u00a0Cosmo<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Jezebel. Most of us are clear on the idea that patriarchies are defined by sexism: the valuing of men over women. \u00a0In our American patriarchy, however, this is matched and perhaps even\u00a0superseded\u00a0by something called androcentrism: the valuing of all-things-masculine over all-things-feminine. \u00a0We know we live in an androcentric society because masculinized things (playing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,2096,2087,23703,221],"class_list":["post-31119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-gender-femininity","tag-gender-masculinity","tag-marketing","tag-cars"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31119"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59287,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31119\/revisions\/59287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}