by Golda Poretsky, HHC
http://www.bodylovewellness.com
Listen to the podcast here:
I’ve read in a number of places that negative body image is a growing problem among men. More and more, men are feeling the push to have less fat, more muscle, smooth skin, etc. etc.
In other words, we’ve got Negative Body Image — Now Conveniently Packaged For Men!
I’ve noticed two recent ad campaigns that really play up these body image fears.
First, there’s this truly insane Just For Men (hair dye) ad. In it, a typically handsome dude with salt and pepper hair hears a knock on the door and sees that it’s his typically attractive blonde neighbor wanting to borrow milk. Looking in his fridge to find that he has no milk, only a Chinese food container and a beer (because he’s a dude, like you, dude at home watching this dude on TV). Not wanting to tell his neighbor that he is milkless, he jumps off the balcony of his apartment onto a moving truck so that he can go to the grocery store and buy milk. Only, he is waylaid by the (huge!) Just For Men aisle. In the kind of split–second decision making that dudes are known for, he decides to buy some Just For Men to go with his container of milk.
He somehow gets back to his apartment, uses the Just For Men, and with hair almost imperceptibly less gray than before, he opens the door. The typically attractive woman (who must have been standing there for at least 20 minutes) just bites her lip seductively as he asks, “Anything else?”
In typical dude-commercial fashion, this guy is heroic — he leaps from high places onto moving vehicles to get milk for a damsel in distress! — but he is concerned that said damsel will not find him attractive due to his somewhat gray hair. Though, any woman that’s willing to wait outside a guy’s door while he goes to the grocery store, comes home and colors his hair was probably digging the guy from the beginning. Uh-duh, right?
But it doesn’t matter that he’s an attractive dude who has ladies waiting outside his door for ages — he has gray hair for godsakes, and cannot be seen until he fixes that mar upon his person!
Moving on!
In this commercial, we see an array of dudes who found out that Weight Watchers “clicked” for them when they realized they could do it online, instead of going to those namby pamby meetings where people talk about their feelings and all that crap. As one gentleman says, Weight Watchers is not “all rainbows and lollipops.” Yeah, chick stuff. Indeed, sir.
Weight Watchers for men has stuff that dudes NEED, like beer cheat sheets that tell you the points for different beers. (Women don’t need that, they only drink drinks with umbrellas, apparently.) There’s also grilling cheat sheets because, you know, MAN LIKE FIRE. FEEL LIKE MAN.
I get it, Weight Watchers. You did some market research and found out that guys like beer and meat and hate meetings, lollipops, and rainbows (except for that awesome, fat Double Rainbow guy who doesn’t own a computer and therefore won’t be signing up for Weight Watchers Online). Guys need to know that they can be obsessive about weight and calories and points in the privacy of their own homes. And even if some female Weight Watchers members find your new ad campaign offensive and stereotypical, who cares, right? They’re going to keep coming back because those ubiquitous Jennifer Hudson commercials will tell them that it works.
So what do you think of these commercials? Feel free to share any links to commercials that are meant to break down body image.
Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. is a certified holistic health counselor who specializes in transforming your relationship with food and your body. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/stay-in-touch/ to get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining.
I really love the double rainbow guy!
Me too! :D
Vesta, I don’t entirely agree that the market for what can be sold to women is entirely saturated. I can think of a few places where the market is quite underserved, such as for beautiful plus-size clothing. For beautiful shoes in a more comprehensive range of sizes and widths. For jewelry made for larger wrists, necks and fingers. Glasses and hats for larger skulls. For goods and services geared toward larger bodies. I’m sure that advertisers can squeeze a little more money out of me if only they didn’t treat me as invisible. What does it say about a society when even soulless capitalists don’t want to pick your pocket?
Just speaking for myself, I like coloring my hair, especially as Mother Nature insists on de-coloring it. Salt-and-pepper has lost a lot of pepper over the years, so what’s wrong with a dash of paprika?
A few thoughts…
I’m looking forward to the leftover guys who won’t color their hair (since no busty blonds will want them). I liked the before pic better.
WW guy. Oh, you’ll learn. It isn’t rainbows and lollipops — it’s rainbows and SUGAR FREE lollipops.
I think it’s romantic to share an eating disorder with the males in our lives. Once they become part of the 95% diet failures, turning them into complusive/binge eaters… we’ll have so much more in common.
Be prepared to see a lot more of this is all I can say. Advertisers have just about saturated the market for what they can sell to women to “improve” themselves, why wouldn’t they start in on men so they can tap into that cash cow? As far as they’re concerned, money is money, they don’t care whose pocket they pick it from or whose self-esteem they trash in the doing. All they probably regret is that they didn’t think of doing it to men sooner. I’m just glad that my husband doesn’t buy into any of it – he’s had white hair for the last 15 years (he’s 55) and won’t color it, and he’s going bald on top and won’t even think about a toupee or hair restoration (I like his thinning-on-top, white hair, I think it’s sexy). As for the dieting thing, forget it. He has type 2 diabetes, and I fight with him tooth and nail to adhere to a meal plan for that – he says if he’s going to die, he’s going to die well-fed, fat, and happy, not starved and doing without foods he likes (so he gets more insulin to cover the carbs he eats, although he is pretty good about limiting carbs most of the time). He’s pretty much like me (probably why we get along so well), he doesn’t pay much attention to commercials at all, other than to laugh at their absurdity.
Aside from those hair color ads (hmmm, those marketers haven’t seen all the women swooning for Cooper Anderson or Jon Stewart, just to name a few, have they?), I’ve also noticed recently a more aggressive campaign for skin care products for men — no more wrinkles for them! :(
I’m torn on the hair thing. Because, on the one hand, if women are expected to look perpetually young and dye their hair the minute they see a single grey, guys could at least be held to the same standard. But, on the other hand, ageism minus sexism is still ageism, and therefore still very much a bad thing.
And having been on the receiving end of the impossible standard, I very much don’t want the guys in my life to feel the same thing, because I know how harmful it is. I would hate, for example, to have my husband feel he needs to dye his hair because he has some premature grey, or that he’d feel that way in 10 or 20 years when the grey isn’t premature. (He’s had a few greys since he was about 19.)
At the Weight Watchers commercial, I have to roll my eyes a little. I’m not surprised, because making women feel “less than” is pretty much WW’s business model. The only thing that’s new is doing it in contrast to men, who are apparently scared that their masculinity will be damaged if they do anything that has our girl-cooties all over it. I laughed when Pepsi Max came out, because I hadn’t perceived diet sodas as particularly “feminine.” It’s not like Diet Pepsi was packaged in pink with sparkly unicorns.
It’s a rather scary indication of how deeply sexist our society is when guys shy away from things that have even the vaguest association with the feminine.
Men have been lucky enough to avoid too much body shaming in the past, but I guess it was only a matter of time until the marketers realised they were missing out on 50% of the population by not making them feel horrible too…