 by Dorothy SnarkerColumns
Video
Currently Recapping
Popular People
|
Super Bowl ads have a problem with the ladiesApparently, men don’t like their wives. Or their girlfriends. Or even possibly their children. At least, that’s what I learned last night while watching the Super Bowl — or, as it was called in my house, the Misogyny Bowl.
Considered advertising’s biggest night, the event is seen as a showcase for the newest and most creative new marketing campaigns. Instead it was a barrage of ads that made men feel like less than men for doing things like getting married, listening to their wives and shopping with their girlfriends. Gosh, and just in time for Valentine’s Day. Think I’m just being an overly sensitive, feminist, bleeding-heart, queer liberal? Well, yes, I am. But I’m not exaggerating on the unmistakably women unfriendly tone of last night’s ads. Take this Dodge Charger commercial. Apparently, big dumb cars are now men’s reward for caring about their partners’ opinions and acting like a grown up. Being a decent human being is hard, isn’t it fellas? But at least that wife was worth a whole car. This poor woman is only worth a set of tires. Oh, I see what you did there, a play on the old “Take my wife, please!” joke. That sound you hear is 155 million American women not being amused. Even the ads without an overtly hateful message toward women had an insidious commentary on manliness. Dude, real men use man soap. Also, I saw enough pantless men to last me a lifetime. There were two ads featuring guys in tightie-whities in a row. Hey, don’t you know people at home are trying to enjoy their nachos? Put on some damn pants! We’ve grown accustomed to the easy sexism of Super Bowl ads. Hot chicks in skimpy clothing is just part for the course. It’s made GoDaddy.com the Girls Gone Wild of web hosting. (p.s. Dania Patrick, you’re better than this.) But this new level of vitriol against women for supposedly emasculating men is an entirely unwelcome twist. In fact, the only ad that actually made falling in love and getting married seem like a good thing was this simple, sweet spot by Google. But at least there was one proud gay couple amid all the unhappily married heteros. No, it wasn’t in the commercial where Megan Fox was so hot she turned gay men straight. It was that Budweiser Clydesdale ad. I hope those two crazy kids make it. Hey, advertisers, girls watch football. And they watch the ads that play during football games. And there is no way we’re going to buy your cars/tires/man soap/tiny TVs after seeing that kind of display. In fact, it makes me want to go and Google “companies that don’t hate women.” So, what did you think? Were you insulted by the ads? Impressed by any of them? Submitted by on February 8, 2010 - 11:00am. |
Recent blog posts
New forum topicsActive TopicsNew Comments
|
Welcome to AfterEllen.com!
- Login
- Join Now!
News, Reviews & Commentary on Lesbian and Bisexual women in Entertainment and the Media
Sad, But Not Surprising
None of this is very surprising. One article I read on this ( http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100215/friedman ) noted that the roles of women around the Super Bowl are either as "sexually available and easily manipulated hotties" or "unlovable shrews who make men miserable."
Per the ad by Tebow and Focus on the [Hetero Patriarchal] Family, we also have one other role - to be the incubators of future sports heroes.
...
"the roles of women around the Super Bowl are either as 'sexually available and easily manipulated hotties' or 'unlovable shrews who make men miserable.'"
This also seems to be the case with the Hardees' commercials.
They're not too smart over there in the marketing department.
------------------------------------------------------------
Dwell in possibility ~ Emily Dickinson
yeah...
it was the same reaction in our house..and once we posted that on twitter.. it seemed to explode with similar feeling..and not just from women.
Of ALL the games played during the football season..the ONE game you are going to have more women and families watching than ANY other game of the season is the Super Bowl. Not a great marketing strategy to offend half the audience on your big showcase night.
I have been a football fan my entire life. I have been watching the Super Bowl since i can remember. I miss the innovative and hilarious or moving commercials. Shock value is cheap. As of today..I will grab my Budweiser and eat my Snickers bar while I surf Google. The won the advertising war in my book last night.
________________________________________
Deviant Art Page
You know
I thought I was the only who thought how anti-women those ads were. Especially the ad for the car and how women were "nagging". I also turn off all godaddy ads and have ceased doing business with them over a year ago because of their sexist/exploitive ads. But I'm sure my 20 domains won't cause a dent in their business.
I LOVED that Google ad! It was so simple and sweet. I did find the casual friday ad rather funny though. And the clydsdale was great!! And Betty White..
Godaddy
Lame
What's with all the hitting?
The theme we noticed was the tackling/smacking/punching/etc. in so many of the ads. Keep the hitting on the field, folks!
However...I have a question. Can I watch FloTV on my iPad?
ha!
ewww
Double groan
sad, isn't it? it's no
AND...
first
I want to say that I LOVE that google ad, so clever.
Second, are we living in the 1950's again? Where the only role women have is to serve and/or infuriate their men? Those ads are horrendous. The sad part, for me, is that I bet my father found those first few ads absolutely hilarious and the most memorable. I bet he pissed himself laughing. I bet he'll spend all day today talking to his buddies about how funny those ads are, and I bet his buddies will agree.
CBS, do you realize that the superbowl is the most watched event of the year? That means men AND women. A lot of women I know only watch the superbowl to watch the commercials. It's a serious shame that these advertisers spent so much money on ads promoting demoralizing and materializing women more than their actual products. Does anyone actually remember what those ads were selling? Gah.
Griswolds
Marketing
Does this type of marketing really work? Are guys sitting at home saying "Yeah I too am totally incapable of asking my girlfriend to shop seperately for a while! A tiny tv will make up for the fact I can't have an adult conversation!" At least Snickers got it right this year with Betty White.
I went to a Super Bowl party
Horrible
Why would CBS turn down a
is that a rhetorical
I don't know. It does
I don't know.
It does seem rather counter-productive.
------------------------------------------------------------
Sudol the SkyNet: Barely Sentient Since 2009!
Interspecies love story
Ima concentrate on the good stuff - Google and the Clydesdale/calf. The only way these could have been more awwww-worthy would have been if the foal and calf had somehow gotten in on that Google search. Awwwwwww.
Wait...
"No, it wasn’t in the commercial where Megan Fox was so hot she turned gay men straight. "
Wait, WHAT? Was that an actual commercial? Please do elaborate. Also, dude, Megan Fox? She couldn't even turn me lesbian. And I am a lesbian.
Haha
This comment made me smile (:
Very occasionally, if you pay attention, life doesn't suck.
-Joss Whedon
i cant's see the videos... this is a good thing.
"No, it wasn’t in the commercial where Megan Fox was so hot she turned gay men straight"
I HAD to login and ask - was this an actual advert?? really?? arrrrrgghhhhhh!!!
So in adverts such as these, women are portrayed either as the "babe with the hot body" or the "nagging annoying stupid wife / girlfriend who would die without her man"
I think they've made it clear what sort of person they expect a woman to be.
I can't see these videos for some reason, which I take as a good thing because I really don't want to get pissed off this evening. I only just came back shopping with my very gay friend. At least he likes shopping with a woman.
(Google, you do us proud)
You can't watch Hulu videos
you're really digging deep
Welcome to the 50s
I saw this blog and joined the site...because I have to something to say.l
For awhile now I have been feeling I've fallen through some crack in time and it's 1955 or something.
The way women act and dress, and how they are seen and treated, makes me feel that something went off the tracks somewhere and I'm in some parallel universe...(you saw Star Trek, right?)
If it wasn't for some of the posts I've read above I'd keep it to myself, but really...is this what we fought for? Is this the culmination of the struggles of the 60s/70s? Aren't women people yet?
Not yet...
Agreed; we are regressing.
Agreed; we are regressing. And I think there could be two explanations 1) the slow parity in college/professional school and within the workforce generally that women are achieving, coupled with their virtual absence in positions of corporate authority and freeze at about 17% in the congress mean that men are going to make an ugly last ditch stance to hang onto their privilege which in the next 3 to 4 decades will be positively resolved (as the poster below suggests) or 2) take a look at Bertram Gross' Friendly Fascism (circa 1980) and the consequences of the national leadership since then, especially the Bush II presidency and the glorification of men as warriors, and portrayal of women as vessels (again, another poster). I find it interesting that justices like Scalia have tried to analogize the U.S. to Sparta in dictum (maybe the kind militaristic state he'd like to see?). Or maybe we're 1) and 2) at the same time, and what we do everyday determines where we will end up. Which is what I prefer to think.
"I can make the rain go any time I move my finger." -- Sinatra
republicans are hardly the
I don't believe I
I don't believe I exhonerated either party. I cited a year and pointed to the national leadership of this country since then. The Democratic party have been enablers. But the proponents of "a right-wing system of government characterized by extreme nationalistic beliefs and strict obedience to a leader or to the state," (defintion of "fascism," courtesy Oxford English Dictionary), have been the Republican party. Its insistence on capitalist-militaristic expansion justified by the Bush Doctrine and baseless theory of the unitary executive on the one hand, and attack of reproductive freedoms for women on the other (not to mention portrayals of women have coarsened in the last decade; the culture now venerates and mystifies soldiers, war, authoritarianism, the act of conception, the act of child raising), fairly point out their ideological leanings.
And it's lazy to say that because there has always been misogyny that any increase or decrease is negligible. Men were "nice" to women in the 50's because women kept their place.
"It requires moral courage to grieve; it requires religious courage to rejoice." -- Soren Kierkegaard
actually, the 50's were not
I like to watch old, old
May I ask....
While I'm pretty clear on why many of the commercials you're citing are bad, I have to admit I'm not entirely clear on why the Betty White one was acceptable.
After seeing it, I was under the impression that the overall message was:
++before the product, subject was "reduced" to being an old lady (in the context of the commercial, this is presented as BAD), but after the product, subject is re-established as 20-something white male (in the context of the commercial, this is presented as GOOD and a "return to things as they should be" ++
Are others here seeing the message of this commercial differently, and am I missing the point?
Please advise - I admit Im sorta confused by the reaction to that one here in the comments.
thanks,
jim
Betty White!!
I love that woman (:
For me, I just saw it as saying that the guy was playing "like an old lady" and I mean, no one really wants to play like an old lady in any sport, little old ladies like Betty White aren't exaclty famous for their fantastic athleticism.. :P And as for him returning to his normal self, well, that's all it was. He just happened to be a twenty-some white guy. That's how he should look. If he had been a thirty-some black guy then THAT would have been "the way things would be" but in that commercial that's not who the character was.
But idk, cause actually when I saw the Megan Fox commercial I didn't interpret it as her turning the gay guys straight. I had just assumed that the picture was on that guys phone so his boyfriend was automatically like "UM WHAT" (I mean, she had said "what if I sent this out to everyone" so it doesn't mean that the guy ENJOYED it, he just had it)
Those are just my thoughts though
To add on
To add on to what you said, at the end of the commercial, some other really hungry guy turns into an old man, who plays just as poorly (actually, he comes off as more feeble) than Betty White (who took a pretty mean hit).
Also, I think that commercial played off the idea that "Betty White is awesome and people will buy candy if we put her in a commecial" more than anything else. If I wasn't snowed in, I'd do it.
"No problem is insoluble, given a big enough plastic bag."
my government teacher (a
the betty White advert
the betty White advert sounds like ageism again the elderly, made to look as if its endearing or 'cute' becasue of the betty white woman. old people can't help that they aren't as active / stronger as they once used to be =/ the advert could be seen as a 'slap in the face'
im just thinking, if it was about a wheelchair-bound child who couldn't do a certain sport before, until this product 'changed his life', and now he could walk "just the way it should be"
=/ hmm, who knows.
phffft
overall bad commercials
I was embarrassed
I hosted a superbowl party and after awhile I was embararssed to have these creepy commercials playing on the TV for guests. I would have been less embarrassed by porn I think. Well not quite because one friend brought her little girls -- and at some point she took them to another room to avoid the sexist commercials. That's right, the violent football was okay, the ads were that bad.
It was a relentless stream of macho bullshit vignettes (or vignuts in reality). Like a terrible woman-hating comedy movie you'd walk out of. I'm not hosting another superbowl party in this lifetime because I could to without the shitty deliberately offensive programming.
To think that they denied the non-offensive gay ad but were fine with the pro-life and ungodly sexist crap. Just never again.
word. yet another reason
Good game , mediocre commercials
Really good game though for those who care more about the outcome of the game than the advertising. I did think the Doritos commercial was cute - keep your hands off my mother and my Doritos! Priceless...and the Leno/Oprah/Letterman trio was creative.
I just think advertising has gotten so stale that they resort to outdated stereotypes. Did anyone else notice the beer commercials portrayed MEN as idiots (the book club one) much like the fathers on my sitcoms of today... Clueless. So I guess I saw it both ways - Men and women were insulted by the advertisers. Until people stop responding to that kind of advertising expect it to continue.
What exactly were the
i loved the game..the
i loved the game..the commercials not so much.
the people at cbs are idiots.
a gay dating website? hell no!
misogyny & men walking around pantless? we'll take 'em!
What?
I feel like I'm missing something...
I guess I just don't see anything "vitriolic" or "insidious" about these ads. The commercials often portray men as buffoons. And they portray women as shrews. Whatever. Standard, unfunny, but not egregiously offensive fodder for ads.
The commercials don't shed either sex in a particularly positive light, but they're "humorous" commercials. Everyone's supposed to be a joke. I think we can take it a little more lightly...
I personally found the first commercial pretty funny. "How 'bout lavender?" "How 'bout not." lol! And I bet one could make a similar commercial about a woman having to tag along with her boyfriend to the hardware store or car garage.
The commercials, as a whole, were pretty innocuous.~Lolita
"But to see her was to love her, love but her, and love forever."
The commercials
The Google ad was the best.
All those ads were pretty unfunny, I thought. The Google ad, however, I thought was really touching. Google is basically an extension of our brain these days -- my Google search history would tell someone exactly who I am. When he (or she, I suppose) googled how to assemble a crib, I got chills. A very sweet ad.
I saw maybe one ad I thought was remotely funny, and I don't even remember what it is. With the economic in the crapper, the first thing companies pull money away from is advertising. I think it shows. Humor ads also have a low retention rate, so I don't know why companies bother. I did see the Focus On The Family ad and I wanted to punch my TV screen.
I was mostly watching the Puppy Bowl anyway. Bandit for MVP!Sexist? or just irritating?
I couldn't stand to watch all the ads, because they're ads after all, and thus bound to offend me. BUT of the ones I watched, I don't think they all reach the sexist standard. Those guys lying in bed/zoning out at work, complaining about their bosses, partners, etc., could just as well be complaining about their male partners (except for the toilet seat up, I'll grant you.)
There are a million compromises a person, man or woman, makes to be in a relationship with the world, and I don't agree that it is hatred of women to want to complain about those compromises, or to want some "reward" weather it's a car or a weekend at a yoga retreat. And if he attaches that reward to his own idea of "manliness", okay fine. That's capitalism--could as easily be based on some other trope.
Not sure why the people in underwear should offend me. Beautiful human bodies! Hope to see them at my next yoga retreat!
yes, sexist. you
yes, sexist. you said:
There are a million compromises a person, man or woman, makes to be in a relationship with the world, and I don't agree that it is hatred of women to want to complain about those compromises, or to want some "reward" weather it's a car or a weekend at a yoga retreat. And if he attaches that reward to his own idea of "manliness", okay fine. That's capitalism--could as easily be based on some other trope.
people make compromises all the time and every individual has their own particular good points and bad points, that much is true, but you can add on top of that the virtually planet-wide, all of human history-long contempt for and oppression of woman by man. hey, i'd like to be all happy and see-no-evil, but those are just the facts.
why is it that men are always so very concerned about their "manliness" and constantly, nervously trying to reassure themselves about it? it's because in their way of think to not be a man, i.e., to be a woman, is a very bad and inferior thing. i work with a lot of young males, and i hear the put downs of women multiple times every day. at a certain point, you can no longer write it off to a misunderstanding, or a certain guy having a bad day or something.