Women and Men

So there’s an ad campaign out there that’s been slowly driving me…well, I’d say it’s driving me to drink, but actually, it’s doing quite the opposite. I guess it’s driving me to sobriety.

The ad campaign is in support of Miller Lite, and its message is simple. If you drink the wrong light beer, you may as well be a woman, and that’s bad. Especially as far as women are concerned.

See? If you’re drinking Bud Light, you’re just a skirt-wearing pansy. And who’s going to call you out for being less than a man? That’s right, the hot female bartender. Because people who wear skirts suck.

And don’t even get me started on back tattoos:

Or — God forbid — carry-alls:

You see? If you drink the wrong kind of beer, you’re just a weak, pathetic woman. And you know who hates women? Women.

Over at Manvertised, Peter Alilunas gets to the heart of the message these ads are conveying:

There is clearly a belief within marketing firms such as Draftfcb that the most efficient way to sell products to men is through a three-step process: 1) Aggressively gender-differentiate them; 2) Pounce on that constructed differentiation and make it an unforgivable cultural transgression to deny or ignore the code of “appropriate” masculinity offered by the product; 3) Create an aura of “safety” around the correct use of the product that will deliver the consumer from the anxiety.

Yet there’s a fourth element, too, which might be the most calculating and effective in the long-term Manvertising strategy: retain the tension by illustrating that it can never quite disappear. Note how the “punchline” of both commercials in the new campaign both end with the protagonist still somewhat unable to escape his gendered mistake. To me, this narrative move perfectly encapsulates how this genre is able to stay salient. Much as the immense body of scholarship on gender has shown, the “appropriate” masculinity is an unattainable mythology. It does not exist, and cannot, and any effort to obtain it will only result in the exposure of its slippery impossibility.

The brilliance of the genre is in the way it plays on this phenomenon, always locating “appropriate” masculinity just out of reach — always putting the protagonist’s friends in the role of anxious jesters, mocking the protagonist even after he has succumbed to conformity. We could easily shift the narrative lens to any of them (just as we could in any Manvertising commercial) and discover, immediately, the impossibility of their quest, too.

This is central to the ad campaign, as it sets up and preys on concerns about masculinity, and demands an extreme, impossible level of gender conformity — but at least it holds out hope that if you just order the right beer, you can get closer to “right.”

But I think it’s worth noting the other message of these ads, and that is simply that women suck. Wearing a skirt, carrying a purse, having a back tattoo — these are things women do, and therefore, by definition, they are lesser things than what men do.

And that’s what drives me crazy about these ads. As usual for ads that promote gender conformity, they don’t just offend one gender or the other; they offend both, obscenely.

This entry posted in Feminism, sexism, etc, Media criticism, Sexism hurts men. Bookmark the permalink. 

21 Responses to Women and Men

  1. 1
    Jeremy P says:

    But I think it’s worth noting the other message of these ads, and that is simply that women suck. Wearing a skirt, carrying a purse, having a back tattoo — these are things women do, and therefore, by definition, they are lesser things than what men do.

    I disagree with you here, I think this has more to do with gender meritocracy. There is nothing scene as ‘wrong’ with women acting and behaving like women, the problem arises when men start to do it.

  2. 2
    Steve says:

    OK Jeff You have run over my Pet Peeve with a bulldozer.

    This is not women suck, this is just as bad but differences MATTER.

    What this is, is just as insidious but will never be understood or fought through the women suck lens.

    This is a case of one persons passion is anothers poision. Or what to us is sewage is food to plants.

    The short form that creates the aha moment is this. Young women with healthy breasts are hot, young men with healthy breasts according to cultural norms are pathetic and worthy of ridicule.
    Same breast tissue but cannot cross the gender devide. Is this as it should be? In my estimation in a technologicaly and socially mature society …. NO. BUT ……..
    We are not that far removed from an agrarian subsistence lifestyle that based survival on gender roles. Women had to bear children because men couldn’t. Women had to bear a lot of children due to infant mortality and such. Women were either tough, mean and resourceful in their gender role or dead by 40. Men were the same.

    Yes we now have freedom from so many survival driven boundries and limitations. We can explore differences, but a cleaver exploiter will find that genetic ancestral anxiety and play it to advantage.

    Gender roles in a subsistence culture are essential, in our culture we can experiment and explore due to our social maturity and technology allowing a land of plenty which gives us a larger and larger buffer as technology gets better and better.

    I would say, recognize the play for your animal nature and rather appeal to the desire to grow beyond your ancestral instincts. Rigid roles are what we must grow beyond.

    In short it is not women suck, but men who are still more rigidly gender typed must treat adopting any feminine trait as almost the same as a toxic substance. Women are immune and derive power from such, but deadly on men.

  3. 3
    attack_laurel says:

    I classify these ads in the general overall theme of “guys who drink ‘lite’ beer are all potrayed as douches”. There’s been this evil trend over the last year to make the ‘lite’ beer ads all hyper-masculine and party-hearty, to the extreme that the men in the ads are behaving in self-sabotaging ways. I wonder if this is to counter the idea that light beers are somehow “lesser” than real, manly beers [/sarcasm], by making the men in the ads so stereotypically male that no-one could ever accuse them of being “girly men” (the Miller Lite ads play into this with a vengeance). This could be a concerted effort by the beer companies to get men to buy more beer, while happily playing into the backlash against men appreciating anything feminine.

    The one brand that doesn’t play into this is MGD64, but it doesn’t make up for anything, since it’s still Miller. I guess they feel any guy who is willing to drink beer-flavoured water because it has less calories is a lost cause to masculinity [/more sarcasm].

    The whole evo-psych thing is tired, though. Men are aggressively gender-policed now more than ever, because of the backlash against feminism, not because of some ancient idea that men and women couldn’t tell themselves apart without rigid behavioral and decorative standards. If that was truly the case, we’d have much bigger problems (and Elizabethan men would never have worn giant pink lacy bows on their shoes).

  4. 4
    Jake Squid says:

    Gender roles in a subsistence culture are essential…

    Link?

  5. 5
    Silenced is Foo says:

    I was about to post how a *woman* with a lower-back tattoo and a short skirt is awesome, while a *dude* with those assets are pathetic – in the minds of beer-commercial logic.

    However, I can see that others have already attempted such arguments and thoroughly run them into the ground.

    So yeah, I’ll just back off and say the obvious:

    These ads suck.

  6. 6
    Flora Poste says:

    What do people think of the voiceover? I would have thought it was meant to be some kind of parody because it’s so ridiculously deep and husky, except that the “do not step out of your gender role” message of the whole ad comes across as deadly serious.

  7. 7
    Mandolin says:

    “Gender roles in a subsistence culture are essential”

    Yeah, assuming you’re talking about hunter/gatherer cultures, this is essentially full of shit. While there tends to be division of labor, these cultures are also where you tend to find some of the most egalitarian views of gender/sex anywhere.

  8. 8
    steve says:

    Mandolin

    No I am talking about early agrarian cultures, First chiefdoms and Empires The fertile Cresent and such going back about 6000 years. More than enoughtime for minor evoloutionary changes from the Hunter/Gatherer Egalitarianism.

    Remember early agriculture was just a little better subsistence than Hunter Gatherer. Still always hungry edge of survival stuff but now rooted in spot to give the male (big muscle) always around advantage.

  9. 9
    Mandolin says:

    Wait, you’re arguing that people in early agrarian cultures have evolved to be different from people in hunter/gatherer cultures? If this is what you’re arguing, then again you are incorrect–it is an error to conceive of human civilization as a “march of progress” wherein human beings start as hunter gatherers, and move on to being agrarian (and then other things).

    I suggest at this point that the conversation is derailing from Jeff’s original topic.

  10. 10
    Jeremy P. says:

    Wait, you’re arguing that people in early agrarian cultures have evolved to be different from people in hunter/gatherer cultures? If this is what you’re arguing, then again you are incorrect–it is an error to conceive of human civilization as a “march of progress” wherein human beings start as hunter gatherers, and move on to being agrarian (and then other things).

    I suggest at this point that the conversation is derailing from Jeff’s original topic.

    I would call his view an interpretation not an error, it something scholars themselves debate over.

    Back to the beer commercials, as someone who does find a lot of these stupid things funny, all the way back to the Budweiser frogs, I think of funniest part is Miller-lite trying to sell itself as the ‘manly’ beer!

    I thought the first commercial the skirt just magically appeared on him after he ordered the beer, but after the other commercials I am not so sure.

    I miss previous ‘man law’ commercials Miller, I think it was Miller, did where you had a bunch of famous men in glass box, determining for all what was manly and not.

  11. 11
    mythago says:

    Regardless of whether you believe in once-upon-a-time stories about gender roles, the trope pushed by these commercials is not that men and women are different, but that femaleness is shameful and anything associated with women demeans and humiliates men.

  12. 12
    Stentor says:

    I would have thought it was meant to be some kind of parody

    I think these commercials deliberately push themselves to the edge of parody as a sort of escape hatch. They can’t be outright parodic, because that would undermine their play on anxious masculinity. But if they’re just a little over-the-top, they can counter critics by saying it’s just a joke. And viewers can treat the ridiculous stuff as humor while still absorbing, rather than being forced to question, the underlying message that men shouldn’t be girly.

  13. 13
    Steve says:

    Agree: Men are in more rigid gender stereotypes and punish response for deviation, and yes, it sucks.

    Disagree: That the patriarchy or men or male culture views classic female traits bad or weak on Gender normed WOMEN.
    If it causes male distraction or oversexualized response that may, or may not suck but it is a different matter.

  14. 14
    Jake Squid says:

    Disagree: That the patriarchy or men or male culture views classic female traits bad or weak on Gender normed WOMEN.
    If it causes male distraction or oversexualized response that may, or may not suck but it is a different matter.

    Asked and answered a billion times over the years on this blog alone. Do we really need to discuss this yet again?

  15. 15
    Les says:

    While woman-hatred certainly informs these adverts, I think the direct point is not that women suck but than men who are inappropriately masculine suck. Alas, I’ve had my masculinity attacked by women for baking a cake once. It was surprising to me and alarming because I’m ftm and hadn’t been passing for long at the time.

    Of course, underneath is still the message that women suck and don’t care how their beer tastes, which is a weird assertion. The people who don’t care how their beverages taste are the ones trying to get drunk and somehow I doubt that trying to get drunk on beer is an especially womanly pursuit. Certainly women do that, but it’s not a behaviour normally seen as feminine.

    Still, the anger in these bartenders is specifically linked to a desire for gender normativity.

  16. 16
    steve says:

    Jake

    You have a difference of oppinion.
    I was making a statement, you either agree or disagree.
    I will cease any reference to this or speak about this out of consideration to your sensitivities here. Is there any other subject that needs to be shut down?

  17. 17
    mythago says:

    Les: it’s a desire for gender normativity, but it’s not symmetric.

  18. Steve:

    Disagree: That the patriarchy or men or male culture views classic female traits bad or weak on Gender normed WOMEN.

    What precisely do you mean by “bad” here? If you mean that patriarchy values, in the sense of expects/approves/rewards (in patriarchal terms) classic feminine traits in gender-normed women and in that sense, in that situation, does not see the traits as negative, that (I think) makes sense to me; if, though, you mean that patriarchy does not devalue those traits in general, then I don’t quite understand where you’re coming from.

  19. 19
    steve says:

    Richard Jeffrey Newman.

    Yes but ….
    Patriarchy devalues those traits subconciously -vs- directly with volition. We are many generations from the Roman ideal of the Father or Pater having the legal right to punish, maim, cripple and/or kill any member of his family for any, or no reason at all.

    Very few abusers of women even the most wretched examples want any other man abusing their own wives. It is his women that will drive one to violence and murder because the women in his life are the broken ones, or so he will tell himself. In todays world in the west their is a great need for a fig leaf, even within ones own conciousness.

    So in short you are correct.

  20. Steve,

    Well, I think you are working with a very limited definition of patriarchy, and I think I will leave it at that, because I have neither the time nor the inclination to discuss it further.

  21. 21
    Dylan Stafne says:

    They’re trying to annoy reasonable people. This kind of wretchedness has to be intentional.

    Ignoring the gender politics, since when is taste the point of drinking beer? Has a bartender ever asked “Do you care what it tastes like?” when asked for a lite beer? Arrg.