Finally, Someone Gets It!
Monday, April 14th, 2008The magazine Advertising Age has finally figured something out and is urging their readers to take heed: Men are not Idiots!
The way the advertising industry portrays men has drawn increasing scrutiny in both the trade press and the mainstream media. Defenders of the status quo — in which men are depicted as irresponsible fathers and lazy, foolish husbands — are starting to feel outnumbered. It’s an understandable feeling.
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The evidence is clear: “Man as idiot” isn’t going over very well these days.
Defenders of the advertising status quo generally put forth the following arguments: Males are “privileged” and “it’s men’s turn,” so it’s OK to portray them this way, and that men simply don’t care how they’re portrayed. Both of these arguments are highly questionable.
This trend in advertising has been going on for years unchecked. One of the latest examples is a Time-Warner Cable commercial showing a wife in the kitchen speaking on the phone with someone when her husband cones in, takes the lid off of a pan on the stove and all of a sudden the whole stove-top is on fire. While still on the phone, the woman calmly reaches past the quivering man and replaces the cover on the pan, therefore putting out the fire, while at the same time calling a restaurant to get food delivered for that evening’s dinner. Now, my problem here isn’t that the wife is portrayed as smart, confident, and quite able to handle these types of situations; it is that the husband is portrayed as someone so brainless that all he needs to do is walk into the kitchen and stuff starts catching on fire, after which he stands there quivering, afraid to do anything.
As far as males being “privileged”; this is just a stereotype left over from the Fifties. As the article points out, women are now earning a majority of the college degrees (both bachelor and master’s), while at the same time the majority of homeless, imprisoned, and suicide deaths are men. It is true that men make up the majority of the corporate power structure, but given some time I have no doubt that women will catch up and maybe even surpass men in this area. The point is, this is a poor excuse for the constant degradation of males by the advertising industry.
Heck, even women agree that men are getting a raw deal here:
Our campaigns have drawn widespread support from women, who generally do not like to see their sons, husbands and fathers put down. As Rose Cameron, senior VP-planning director and “man expert” at Leo Burnett, says: “One of the great markers [society] looks to about the intelligence of a woman is her choice of husband. So if advertisers position men as idiots in the husband scenario, then you’re commenting on her smarts. Women have told us, ‘If you want to get on my good side, you do not show my husband as the idiot.’”
Since it seems that both sexes agree that the negative portrayal of men in advertising is a bad thing, why isn’t the trend changing? As with most business trends, sometimes the only way to effect change is to hit them in the wallet. Personally, I try to avoid products whose advertising depicts men as clueless idiots. I figure that if enough people avoid these types of products, the manufacturers will get the hint and change their advertising concepts. Money talks.
Finally, I don’t want you to get the idea that I’m some humorless cretin who can’t take a joke. An occasional depiction of a clueless male is fine (just as an occasional depiction of a clueless female is fine), but it has gone way beyond that. In fact, the last commercial I can remember which depicted a man in a favorable light was a Gatoraid commercial showing male athletes competing. Humor in advertising is more than appropriate; many times it is essential. However, care must be taken not to cross the line between parody and outright degradation.
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