Ten years ago on this blog, we were talking about the trend in advertising since probably the mid-nineties; if you look at an ad featuring a family, the man is probably depicted as a bumbling doughy cretin married to an improbably gorgeous woman who is (along with the kids, apparently including any boys that haven’t gotten married and had kids yet) inevitably smarter and more capable than him.
And now, the people who study and talk about these things are…well, studying and talking about it. At least in the UK:
What is more concerning is advertisers’ and programme makers’ depiction of men as stupid, subservient slaves to career-juggling supermums – a trend that runs from the buffoonery of Daddy Pig to an endless tidal wave of cretinous TV ad dads.
The Mintel research confirmed that 20 per cent of men think we are portrayed as incompetent about the house in ads, and small wonder. In ad land – unlike the real world where men dominate computing and engineering – bumbling blokes can’t even get a broadband connection and struggle with basic domestic appliances, while smarter women roll their eyes, then save the day.
Overall, this means that, increasingly, men in adverts are prized for their looks, but ridiculed for their brains – which is precisely where women were in the 1950s and ’60s.
Here’s the scary part – and the part that I’ve never seen anyone write about; advertising doesn’t happen by accident. Even in the Mad Men era, advertising was the product of rigorous audience research; it’s vastly moreso today.
The “Dumb Husband” stereotype reigns supreme in ads for products where women might be reasonably assumed to be the primary consumers. Look at ads aimed at men; for the most part, women may well be eye candy, but the ad passes on little or no subtext about the womens’ intelligence. And yet ads aimed at women are highly likely to portray men as idiots.
Given that ads – much less trends in advertising – don’t happen by accident, this suggests that these ads are dominant because that’s what women think about their men.
And yet society wonders why young men are choosing video games over dating.
The men are idiots, which is why they’re generally in higher paying jobs than the women. Did I get that right?
And yet society wonders why young men are choosing video games over dating.
Because over the years video games have gotten better and delivered more value for the time and money spent indulging in them. Dating on the other hand . . .
Why date when you can find the love of your life online – naked and contorted? Just sayin.’
Feminism is a way for the people without penises to rape men.
Let me explain.
Astrophysicist Geoff Marcy has resigned his professorship at Berkeley after some female students accused him of sexual harassment. Marcy is a pioneer in exoplanet research; he basically invented the science and the techniques. It’s a he-said, she-said thing.
So a few months ago another astrophysicist refuses to become an adviser to a female grad student because she is too young and attractive. He doesn’t want to be tempted, or falsely accused, or whatever.
Guess what? His refusal to accept the adviser role to a female grad student was itself seen as sex discrimination.
So a few months ago another astrophysicist refuses to become an adviser to a female grad student because she is too young and attractive. He doesn’t want to be tempted, or falsely accused, or whatever.
Guess what? His refusal to accept the adviser role to a female grad student was itself seen as sex discrimination.
Um yeah, that’s pretty much a textbook case of sex discrimination. You can’t refuse to work with someone because of their gender and if he was worried that he’d be unable to control his desires if he found her attractive, then he’s got bigger issues.
I don’t think that he was afraid that he couldn’t control his emotions. I think he was afraid that some of the normal back and forth between a thesis adviser and a grad student could potentially be misunderstood. If he worked hard at keeping a distance between them that he wouldn’t with a male grad student, it wouldn’t be good for her.
Marcy is a very gregarious, ‘touchy-feely’ sort of person, with men and with women. I gather that the charges against him were the result of students talking to one another.
This is a very touchy issue (no pun intended). Most advisers are men, and if you are a grad student, having a high-powered professor as a thesis adviser can make your career.
A lot of astronomy is done remote these days, but you still have advisers and grad students spending long hours alone together.
One astronomer I know married a much younger grad student. It was a bit of a scandal, but he was given a pass in part because he is Russian 🙂
http://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/ott-harassment-investigation
They are theorists, I don’t know any of the principals.
BG
A couple of the senior managers I contracted to at UHG would never have one on one meetings with any(male or female) of their direct reports behind closed doors. I suspected why and it was corroborated some years later when I ran into one of them socially. He said he initially started doing it because of the women but a couple of his colleagues had he-said/he-said problems with some gay employees so he just made it SOP for everyone. He claimed that an unexpected side effect was that it kept a lot of the nasty office politics from landing in his office because the snitches didn’t feel safe in his there with the open door.
Kel-
I’ve had female supervisors for over 20 years. No problems. At my age the coals are well-banked. Because of the Marcy fallout I have to watch some videos and initial some training docs.
But man . . .
In my line of work, when I am on shift, I have to drive about an hour a day with a coworker. Once, while driving with a twenty-something woman coworker, the talk turned to scheduling. Somehow or other I went off on a rant about a female employee who had left years before. She was doing the in vitro thing and so she was out for FOURTEEN MONTHS for maternity leave and the rest of us had to take the slack by working longer shifts (we’re not paid overtime). After a few minutes of this most excellent rant, I realized that she wasn’t saying anything. No response.
Uh-oh.
A week later she announced that she was pregnant.
I dodged a frikkin’ bullet there . . .
All of this just shows how much our society has degraded.
When I lived in LA from 79-81, I had a female sales manager. She was 10 years my senior, but she was smoking hot. She was originally from London. My sales territory covered downtown LA, north of Wilshire Blvd to Bakersfield over to San Luis Obispo. We spent many hours in the car and on overnights together. Even though we were both married, she was a great mentor and developed a strong friendship that is still intact, I guess the potential for a scandal was present. IMO, every situation involves personal choices. We were professionals and kept things that way.
I can’t help but wonder though. If this same set of circumstances were in place today, what if some office busy body decided it was an inappropriate relationship?
bosshoss
I too have had great professional relationships with all but one of my female bosses. That one exception was truly egregious – when the company got sold one of her partners came into the tech area to announce the sale and a room of 40 (equally divided men and women) spontaneously broke into song “Ding dong the witch is dead…”
The women in the company hated her more than the men – she was 5’2″ and would not allow any woman taller than her to be hired.
BG – yes you did dodge a bullet there
One thing to note is that in my experience, sexual harassment, at least as is perpetrated by men, does not tend to be that subtle–at least those aren’t the cases that come to mind. A female of supervisor of mine (who was wonderful–really helped my career and sharpened me a lot) told of her harassment, and being dumb and sort of young, I asked her what she meant. It was the kind of behavior that would get you kicked out of a sleazy singles bar. I also saw that kind of thing from a male professor (still employed 20 years later) and a colleague who unfortunately had a manager who covered extremely well for him.
And for my part, I’ve seen two instances where comments were made that could be interpreted that way, both by people working in HR, ironically, and I just decided to give them the benefit of plausible deniability instead of making an issue. Turned out to be a right decision–nothing was ever repeated.
I’m also with those that think BG dodged a bullet. I once got in trouble for noting that my family, with five children at the time, couldn’t afford for my wife to work outside the home even if she was a patent lawyer or something. It was interpreted as me being against women working outside the home.
I remember this discussion 10 years ago, and I still remember the commercial that I used as my contribution to the discussion: It was for a mini-van back when “fold down into the floor” rear seats were a new and sparkly feature. It showed a family packing up for a trip. The mom was calm and cool and efficiently walking around the minivan sticking kids and things here and there. The dad was absolutely befuddled trying to collapse the collapsible stroller. The mom got that “oh you silly boy” look on her face, walked over, folded down one of the seats, and then put the stroller into the open space without collapsing it. The dad just stood there and had the expression on his face of “Oh….ok.”
That said, I do remember some epic battles with our collapsible stroller when we had to use it, but it did not discriminate. It was equally as maddening to both my wife and myself.
Also, in some aspects of my marriage, that whole “man=bumbling, woman=capable” concept is valid. Especially with things like cooking, finance, and scheduling. On the other hand, I’m in charge of making sure cars, appliances, computers and other electronics (which are a priority in our household) are working properly and she avoids those duties.
I also remember an ad for some environmentally friendly thing where it showed an INCREDIBLY over-exaggerated metro-sexual dad doing various things around his approx 8yo son. Like brushing his teeth and leaving the water running, buying an incandescent lightbulb, or buying a pack of non-recycleable something. In each instance, the precocious little (censored) child would glare at his father, and correct his father’s environmentally degrading action: fill a glass with water and then turn off the faucet, putting the incandescent bulb back and getting a CFL bulb, and picking a more recyclable product.
And every time I saw that commercial, I thought to myself, “No 8 year old I’ve ever known was educated enough in green products and actions to make those changes, disciplined enough to even CARE what their parents were doing in that respect, nor brazen enough to correct their parents as this little brat did”
Bill C;
Yea, it’s funny about the cars, electronics, etc. Same situation at my house and the houses of all of my friends: when her car breaks down, it’s our fault and our problem, even if the “check engine” light has been on for a week before they say anything!
My dad used to say that women would never rule the world, because their machines would break down and they wouldn’t be able to fix them. He also had a life long ambition to find “the dumb ass that invented the automatic transmission and send him to a Siberian Gulag”. In his mind, that guy made it possible for more women to drive.
Many feminists these days explicitly endorse the idea of taking privilege away from men and giving privilege to woman (the campus rape ‘crisis’ is a typical example). The justification for this is that men are over privileged by society and women are underprivileged by society.
The problem with that justification is that it can never be more than opinion (and opinion no less self-serving as a man thinking men deserve their ‘excess’ social privilege). It can be argued that men have been unduly privileged at the expense of women, but it can’t be proven. From another POV women have been privileged at the expense of men (who lives longer? Who has a higher rate of college admittance?). The physiological differences between men and women dwarf the physiological differences between the traditional races of man.
I think a lot of modern feminism is stuck in the younger days of baby boomers. I’ve talked to feminists of that age, and they seem to believe that the conditions of the 1960s still prevail, that powerful men feel that they can force the women who work for them to have sex with them and they will be protected by some patriarchial system.
Bullshit.
Unless you are a democrat.