And not just falling beer. Falling bad beer.

Did you see under 'manstuff' all the pictures of women, except you couldn't see any of their faces??

Oh yeah. And they're not just killed by falling beer cans: they're killed instantly by falling beer cans the very moment a man deviates from the stereotypical paradigms of masculinity.

Which means that if you're a man, and you show a modicum of weakness, or sympathy, or even saying "wheeee!" when jumping on a trampoline, you will be instantly crushed to death.

Once we smite the Girly Man an offscreen narrator with the Voice of God (a man's voice, obviously) saying: "Men should act like men. And light beer should taste like beer. Milwaukee's Best Like."

Watch ESPN or Fox Sports Net and you'll see these ads to no end. As a sports fan, I am needless to say, displeased.

I'm more worried about the fact that people still drink The Beast. Ugh.

OK, first of all, I'd be offended if I were a man by the assertion that it was brewed for *my* taste. Ew.

So when I was visiting a friend in Ireland this summer, I was appalled by the packaging on Yorkie candy bars that said, illustrated with an appropriate little bathroom-door drawing with a circle and line through it, "Not for girls." Look. See? If a company is going to stoop to lame, uncreative shit like this, I seriously doubt that any products they manufacture are going to be so good they can afford to ignore 50% of the market.

Or do women literally buy into this? Like, if we eat this chocolate or drink this beer, it proves we're "different" from other girls, the kind who can't "handle" it? You know, one of the cool ones? Hate to say it, but I'm pretty sure that would have been my reaction in college -- unfortunately when I was informed I was "cool for a girl" I took it as a compliment. *cringe* Does it actually enable companies to snag two demographics -- one will buy if you tell them it's for them only, and the other will buy if you tell them they can't have it? Another example of how what's masculine is good for everyone but no man would want to touch what's feminine -- girls on boys' bikes, men not drinking wine coolers but women having whiskey, the lack of male nurses... on and on and on.

How do other, nonfeminist women react to these ads? Any anecdotes?

Well, I'm a hardcore feminist, and I think it's retarded. As for the candy bar, if I saw something on it that said "not for girls," them I would say "oh, OK, I guess I won't spend my money on it" and choose something else.

Not only am I a feminist, but I am a woman with excellent credit and a helluvalotta spending power. I also have a minor in journalism, and can tell these companies in a very succinct, to-the-point way why they suck and why they're not going to get any of my money. (And I mean ALL their companies - I research where my money goes because I will not fund idiots like these, through them or through their subsidiaries.)

That lame, uncreative ad campaign worked on me. Not being from the UK, I was not aware that Yorkie bars seriously aren't that great. Apparently they used to be, but not anymore. There is substantial discussion about it out there on the internet, shmana, if you're really interested. I promise, because I read it before I bought that stupid candy bar.

Oh yeah... radio ads for Miller that talk about "MAN LAW". What is up with this trend? Are beer companies suddenly feeling their masculinity threatened? Have they lost a significant number of customers b/c more women are buying their product? (Most men wouldn't be that lame... would they?) Or maybe their ad firms are just incredibly crap.

Although I am getting fed up with this whole Man-Up campaign corporations are shoving down our throats lately, you have to admit the trampoline commercial was pretty funny.

ok, on the Yorkie thing it gets worse because when they promoted it there was the usual sexist adverts but they handed out the bars for free in London stations to men only. A few women made a fuss about that........

Then they sold the same bars in pink wrappers along side the blue ones too for a while.

I think most women just shrug these things off but I stopped buying them. I'm guessing that it didn't affect the sales too much as they still do it.

The beer adverts just rip off Monty Python anyways...

I'd prefer the quick, painless death of being crushed to the slow, agonizing one that awaits you if you drink The Beast. I think the whole "masculine" thing is just a way for people who can't afford better hooch, or whatever it is, to justify their purchase.

all the "man is good" ad campaigns tell me that "real men" are boring, personality-less drones who cannot experience joy. line up, ladies, and getcha some a that!

I FUCKING HATE beer commercials for precisely this reason. Bud Lite drinkers are portrayed stupid and having no impulse control. Fucking "Miller Lite" has the guy who sounds like he narrates NFL films explaining how "real men" behave. Then there's the insipid "man law" ads, in which some guy who had elective plastic surgery--elective plastic surgery!--is trying to tell me how a man should behave. Even "Heineken" has embraced the idea that men's behavior is essentially a push-button process--push the red button, we want sex; push the blue button, we want beer, etc. Needless to say, I don't drink any of their beer.

Fuck those motherfuckers and poor me a damn Anchor Steam. I'll show you how a man drinks a beer. And a man doesn't drink beer out of a fucking soda can--look at the new Milwaukee's Best cans--it looks like a motherfucking pepsi ferchrissakes!

Sorry for the vitriol, but these things have been pissing me off for years.

An ad campaign as offensive as the beer itself. I don't watch sports so I haven't seen them.

Even in High School, I thought Milwaukee's Best was the cheapest, absolute worst beer you could buy. When I'm relaxing after putting the baby to bed and cleaning up the kitchen, I go for a bottle of ale or a cuba libre (if I need a little caffine too).

The Man Law stuff is offensive too, but I wouldn't buy that beer anyway. "Real Men of Genius" is a funny campaign but Bud lite is also undrinkable.

I think that these beer companies have to turn to prick-waving in advertising precisely because their beer is such shit.

It's proof that childish ego stroking can in fact mitigate the shame of habitually drinking pisswater beer. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the misogyny in the commercials increases as the cost of the beer being so advertised decreases, either.

Let's not forget Men's Pocky. Apparently it's dark chocolate, therefore less sweet, therefore less appealing to women and more appealing to men (because men don't have sweet tooths? I don't get it; I've known plenty of men who eat more sweets than I do, and I am no slouch in the sweets-loving department).

I actually like beer. I often drink a bottle of beer when I'm relaxing -- I think one time in my life I drank beer from a can and it was shit. When you buy cheap-ass beer, you usually get what you pay for. I prefer beer and other kinds of alcohol that actually taste good. I can hold my liquor, and I can afford to buy lots of it -- I make more in a year than some of these redneck beer-drinking manly man bums will probably save in their entire lives.

On the one hand, I understand why shit beer companies don't advertise to me; even a good advertisement is not going to get me to drink shitty beer. But what I don't understand is why the entire beer industry in general is not selling to women. I can PROMISE you there are LOTS of loaded, good-beer-appreciating women like me out there. Why would you want to drive us away with misogynist advertising? That's just bad marketing.

I'm from Missouri so by unwritten state law I have to drink Bud Light *blushes, rubs foot against ground*

I never really cared about these commercials. Guys dig 'em becuase they feel something has been taken away from over time and it's easy to blame women but really, as society has progressed from rural communities to cities, and work has moved from outdoors to indoors the need for the rugged cowboy/Malrbro Man type has dissapated. And it's not because of women it's because shit changes (and men were the ones who made these changes). They want something to define them and sadly they're choosing the worst version of men-i.e. lazy, slovenly and dim witted to outright stupid. It's like when the Man Show came on and it fed to the lowest common denomenator. Men weren't protrayed as intellengent (even though they're SUPPOSED to be smarter than women), or ambitious or anything good. No, they just wanted to lounge around and fart and giggle at boobies.

And I totally agree with Furious, Burt Reynolds should be kicked off the Man Committee or whatever it's called for looking like he's permanetely in a wind tunnel. REAL men shouldn't worry about their aging looks.

I watch football with my friends, both male and female. We all get into the game rabidly; there's no "division of sexes" where the gals go into the other room and chat about knitting vagina-shaped vacuum cleaner cozies while the guys scream at the TV and dogpile on the carpet when there's a touchdown. We all scream and dogpile.

I'm perplexed that the advertisers just don't get it. Lots of women watch TV sports. Even - gasp! - football. Yet the commercials are predominatly geared toward troglo-men. Between the noxious beer ads, the penis-metaphor razor ads, and the patriarchal financial services ads that dominate commercial breaks, I feel driven to avoid this sputum at all costs. Usually that involves drinking tequila (and, if my neighbor's reading this, I do apologize for befouling your lawn).

See? We can be drunken boors, too! I want my ads with bare-chested objectified men that I can hoot at!

I've seen the candy bars in England and actually thought they were kind of funny..I bought one and as someone else mentioned, they weren't very good anyway!

And Men's Pocky? I've been buying those as stocking stuffers for my dad and stepdad for years! How can you be offended at such metrosexual package design? Manly it is not. :)

The quality of beer is always inversely proportional to the "manliness" of its marketing. What cracks me up is when a company like Budweiser tries to convince a guy that he'll have two girls on his arm for a threesome later on...how on earth are you going to get everyone pastered enough with the alcoholic content in a Bud?? Or just the fact that the above ad is trying to play the manly card for a LIGHT beer? If you want to be a "real" man, try Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Ale with a whopping 9%.

I guess in general I don't care about beer and candy ads, because you'd have to be an idiot to take them seriously anyway.

Slightly off-topic, there IS a creepy advertising trend I've been noticing lately: the "acceptable" interracial couples, namely all the ads with white men and Asian female couples. Is this the only color combination allowed on American TV commercials? I have NEVER seen a black/white couple (in any form), or an Asian man with a white female in any major ad campaign. Would someone care to explain?

Jane,

I'd noticed that too, though there was a beer commercial, Heiniken (sp) I think, a while back that had a white man and a black woman on the couch. The black woman was asleep facing away from the guy and he had a beer in the hand that she was sleeping on. To get her to move willingly he said, "I love you" and she rolled over to rest her head on his chest, thus freeing his beer hand so that he could drink. I actually thought it was cute. There was also a line of commercials aimed at men on how to deal with certain situations and one of the situations was a guy (white) at a party talking to a girl (black) when her friend pops up between them and is basically cock blocking, so that's two that I know of.

The sad reasoning behind the Asian woman/White guy trend might be because Asian women actually do marry a lot of white men. There was a show on VH1 last year about race and hollywood and one of the stats they brought up was that the groups least likely to get married are Asian men and Black women (the context was why you never seen an Asian action hero have sex or get the girl in films)and that Asian woman and Black Men were more prone to marry outside their race. They probably don't show black men with white women because that is still a VERY touchy subject with black women.

P.S.:

It is often okay for the males of a given race to date/marry/breed outside their race, going with the whole "conquering" mentality, however not okay for the women. White men marrying asian women wasn't really looked highly upon but it was no where near what happened when a white woman married an asian man (i.e. Bruce Lee's wife Linday Emery). In Muslim society men marrying outside the race is perfectly fine whereas it's forbidden for Muslim women to do so.

Yep. Outsiders are monsters. It's OK for a man to marry an outsider, because he's strong and she's weak. He can make her behave. But to pair our precious delicate women with dangerous male foreigners? No way.

TV's first interracial kiss was between a black woman and a white man (although it's disputed whether the "real" kiss was actually shown -- still, effect's the same). The discouraging thing is, in order for it to be socially acceptable to have a pairing like this, it's got to happen waaaaay in the future -- as though, "oh, we couldn't have this happening in modern times. I don't want to see that in my lifetime!" And, of course, the kiss happened against both parties' will.

So hard to say whether that one was encouraging or discouraging.

That's right, white men can have women of any color but white women must be protected from men of color who threaten white male hegemony sexually and economically.

I think gender issues are so hard to talk about with guys precisely because we have this culturally entrenched idea about what being a "man" is all about. I think this stems right from growing up - Dad being the authority and the disciplinarian and thus by definition a hard person to talk to about feelings and emotions. (That's what 'Mom' is for.)

So I think most guys grow up without ever really talking about feelings or emotions with their fathers - and adopt the attitude themselves as part of being a 'man.' And of course, you can't talk to any of your buds about what you're feeling unless its about girls or sports... That wouldn't be 'manly...'

So yeah, commercials like this just kindof reinforce the emotional repression all us guys develop.

Yep. Outsiders are monsters. It's OK for a man to marry an outsider, because he's strong and she's weak. He can make her behave. But to pair our precious delicate women with dangerous male foreigners? No way.

Heehee...

One white woman/Asian man couple I know have a crazy disposable income. Too bad advertisers haven't caught on to this. I guess in the past when I've dated Asian dudes, my dollar is also unimportant. My friends come in all shades, and they have partners of all shades - it would be nice to see advertisers step up and start targeting these people.

No one has even mentioned the scandalous possibility that we might know white women (or take your racial pick) involved with Eastern Indian men! Can you imagine a Mastercard "Precious" ad with the groom's parents coming over from the old country? Sheee-it no!

I also notice that when African American couples are featured, they are often the same skin tone. Weird.

Kind of makes you yearn for the old days when you couldn't walk two feet before running into a Benetton billboard.

Elizabeth Hurley? I still think of Princess Di as some kind of honor killing because she was about to marry a Muslim.

It is very clear to me that the use of gender insecurity has been a very effective method of advertising for both genders. The formula is simple. Make people insecure about meeting gender standards, so they will buy your stuff. But it is more pervasive than that as well. The same insecurities can feed various interests all over the place: political, religious, economics (aside from the consumerism noted above), leisure, etc. etc.

Why am I a feminist? Because it is the construction of gender, class, and race that is at the forfront of all those insecurities that in total lead to most (not all) of the domination, oppression, and all that bad crap.

BTW: I went to that Milwaukee Light website, and tried one of the games. It was the don't cry in front of your buddies game at a "sensitive climax" or some crap. The game was nearly impossible (and if you lose "your" face on the screen is some twisted visage, marred by the crying), but after a bunch of tries I finally did it. Unfortunately, I didn't get the validation they were promising. Just felt more dirty for giving them my time.

"In Muslim society men marrying outside the race is perfectly fine whereas it's forbidden for Muslim women to do so."

Outside the religion. Not outside the race. Muslims are not a race. I don't know what particular muslim society you are talking about. Arab? Turk? South Asian? In either case the outsider would have to convert or else the marriage is not recognized.

Honestly, the saddest thing about this advertising campaign is I can see drunk guys pelting another guy with cans of beer for doing something that isn't masculine.

*twitch*

If you want to be picky, Muslim men are technically only allowed to marry Jewish and Christian women, or "people of the book."

Of course, they generally do whatever they want.

Anyway, this is all just lazy marketing. They make a stupid ad, and broadcast it over and over, and people pick up the beer they've heard of instead of venturing outside their comfort zone. Especially because REAL men only drink American beer, not that foofy European or Japanese shit. Some of that stuff has FRUIT in it.

And I'm sure my white boyfriend will appreciate the notion that he's only dating me to perpetuate the economic and sexual white male hegemony.

But seriously, I think there's a certain segment of society (generally fairly young) that accepts interacial relationships, regardless of pairings. If advertisers haven't caught on yet, that's their problem. Frankly, I have no issue with them not trying to push their wares on me directly.

Wow, as a guy, I'm not even close to offended by this ad or the manlaw ads. The part that is key for me is that these commercials are specifically designed to be *funny*. I mean, it's not like these admakers actually believe that if a guy says Whee on a trampoline, that he should be crushed to death. Part of being a guy is dealing with all of these guy-standard messages in a way that allows us to not take them so seriously. It makes the contradictions more comfortable. Kind of like how a decade ago, two guys could accidentally talk about something a little too personal, and then one of them would say "THOSE AREN'T PILLOWS!" and both guys would start laughing and it made it okay that they were talking about whatever the other subject was.

These ads are playing up the beer/masculinity linkage, that's all.

"THOSE AREN'T PILLOWS!" - tunesmith

Great scene. :) I miss John Candy. :(

Some thoughts for tunesmith and some thoughts in general--

I'm not uncomfortable with the commercials because of the effect they could have on people like you, people that will see the ads as mocking forced masculinity or whatever. I'm uncomfortable with them because I think a lot of this country is dumb, and when these slogans are drilled into the brain, there will be an effect. One of the commercials poses the act of calling a significant other to say hi as weak or womanly or whatever. First of all, weak equalling womanly is a horrible equation, second, sensitivity/communication equalling weak is a horrible equation, etc. I just think some people with lazy minds will see these commercials and become reluctant to nurture fledgling impulses to behave creatively in their worlds, or differently from those around them, if those around them perpetuate stereotypes that are very much alive and very pernicious in our society.

Some thoughts for tunesmith and some thoughts in general--

I'm not uncomfortable with the commercials because of the effect they could have on people like you, people that will see the ads as mocking forced masculinity or whatever. I'm uncomfortable with them because I think a lot of this country is dumb, and when these slogans are drilled into the brain, there will be an effect. One of the commercials poses the act of calling a significant other to say hi as weak or womanly or whatever. First of all, weak equalling womanly is a horrible equation, second, sensitivity/communication equalling weak is a horrible equation, etc. I just think some people with lazy minds will see these commercials and become reluctant to nurture fledgling impulses to behave creatively in their worlds, or differently from those around them, if those around them perpetuate stereotypes that are very much alive and very pernicious in our society.

I find the beer ads amusing and not usually offensive--though when you really consider them, they defiently are--but I also find they don't convince me to buy the beer. And as a college student, I drink plenty of bad beer--but don't most people either has a budget or a brand they're already loyal to? I mean, how much does this really helps sales?

At least beer, though, I get the stereotype. Men's candy bars!? I guess we're breaking away from the female/chocolate addiction stereotype. But how do candy bars get a gender assigned to them? Are they adding hormones along with the nougat?