I was watching some footage of fellas recently and learned some shocking things. Guys seem to not be able to handle very much at all. It must be so tough. So guys, what exactly is wrong with…
1. Women who care about them. Here’s Klondike rewarding a guy for listening to his horrible boring parasite of a wife for waaaaaay too long.
2. Quality Shirts. Here’s JC Penny (thanks Sociological Images for the link) telling guys that if they just endure a few seconds of well-made clothing, they’ll get to stare a woman.
3. Women who care about them. Olympus finally has a solution to having to spend time with your terrible, soul-crushing romantic partner.
The ad says that with their camera, guys will “never get bored of how their girlfriend looks again.” Thank God someone figured out how to make us XX-chromosomed folk interesting! Geez! Can I get one of these filters to carry around with me? I can only imagine how tedious it must be to look at me in passing. Apologies guys, really. From the bottom of my boring boring heart.
4. Respecting People. Here’s Dodge giving men a getaway vehicle so they can run the hell away from their shittastic lives where they are forced by harpies to be considerate.
5. Women Who Care About Them. In order to get men to buy milk, The California Milk Processor’s Board showed us not how milk is a healthy thing that helps prevent bone loss and teeth shattering, but how it can be a way for men to avoid talking to their partners. Because if she’s upset, it’s obviously because of some wackadoo hormone issue. And that’s scrrrry!
I, for example, have never been upset because as a human, I experience a range of emotions and sometimes become frustrated because of a misunderstanding. At least drinking this glass of milk helps me keep my lady mouth shut, so my boyfriend doesn’t have to run away in terror. Or eat himself to obesity on ice cream sandwiches.
You could say that these are just flukes and aren’t indicative of anything in particular. Except that the companies who put these out are some of the biggest out there. A whole lot of people had to approve these ad concepts and believe them to be viable ways to sell their products.
They must not consider them to be wildly insulting to women, since clearly we exist to either annoy or titillate men. And they must not consider them to be insulting to men who apparently can’t make a decision without staring at some boobs first; or who have no desire to communicate with the boobs they’re staring at ever.
Fer serious, tho: Guys, do you find ads like this insulting? Do you ever get sexy-fatigue? I mean how many impossibly hot girls can you stare at in one lifetime? Are you a guy who doesn’t mind chatting with his partner every now and then? Or are women really that terrible? Why are you so afraid of us? Let us know in the comments.
***
For more fantastic ads that were definitely not ill-conceived, check out this sampling featuring Nivea, Dove and some hands dressed up like ham wallets.
******
The Oreo Experience 
Men never get sexy-fatigue. That’s why commercials like #2 still exist and will exist. I’ll be honest, I had to be reminded it was for shirts. =)
This post really reminds me just how intolerable women are. Thank you for the reminder. I don’t even want to look at myself in the mirror anymore. Ugghh, just gross.
I don’t think that’s very– HOLY SHIT!!! Is that Phoebe Cates?!?! OMFG!!!
I’m sorry. What was the question again?
My gut responses to these ads that I’m sure Aydrea will hate me for:
1. She doesn’t care about him, she only cares about preserving her pre-conceived notion of what her “ideal relationship” is, whether it’s based in reality or not. When this pre-conception is threatened, she experiences anxiety. When she experiences anxiety, she masks it by talking to her partner about something unrelated and ultimately inconsequential. The man can sense it. He craves ice cream. It will help nothing.
(I’m bullshitting. The serious answer is that men and women have different emotional reasons for telling people things, and men, unfortunately, often find women’s reasons baffling since they generally don’t share them. “I just have to tell you this…” “Um… Why?” Seriously, just ask that “Mars & Venus” assshole.)
2. Be honest, Aydrea, you’ve never respected any man in a JCPenny shirt. “Quality” shirts are not a priority for any sensible male. Clothing exists at two ends of a spectrum. At one end: Practical, functional. low-maintenance. At the other: DAMN SHARP! Everything in between is a waste of time. JCPenny is of benefit to no one, and you know it.
3. Indeed, the people behind this camera ad are idiots. First of all, if you’re (quote) “bored” in your relationship, no amount of portrait photography is going to fix it. But if we’re only talking Taking Pictures of Your Girlfriend and not deeper stuff, here…
Hypothetically, if THAT woman is your girlfriend, then all she needs to do to keep you from getting (quote) “bored” is take her top off once in a while, or YOU are the problem. Hell, if you’re even MILDLY attracted to your girlfriend (I hope you’re more than mildly attracted — and in love — if you call her your girlfriend), then all *she* needs to do to keep you from getting (quote) “bored” is take her top off once in a while, or YOU are the problem. You can’t sell a filter for that. Sorry, Olympus, your attempts to shill cameras through sowing the seeds of discontent won’t fly in this case. Turning a girl sepia won’t stop a man from getting (quote) “bored.”
4. I must confess, I take issue with the notion that pretending to like female-targeted vampire TV shows falls under the category of “considerate” and not “living a lie so a girlfriend can feel like she’s ‘bonding’ with her partner even if she doesn’t actually care how he really feels.” Besides, all this ad says is co-habitiation requires more changes in the male’s behavior than the female’s. This has been proven by science. “If you’re not ready for it, buy this truck.” This has *not* been proven by science.
5. I think you may be projecting on this one. I don’t see “hormones” anywhere in this ad. I see a parody of the “apology flowers” replaced with cartons of milk. But honestly, if you’ve never been on the target end of a conversation where you’ve been “Wrong” for saying something that was taken the wrong way and then continued to be “Wrong” even after you explained that wasn’t what you meant at all… Well… Most every guy has at some point.
Not every woman does it, but when you date a woman who does, you never forget it. It’s Kafkaesque. The normal level of respect and rationality we all expect — and usually get — when communicating with people in every other life situation has vanished. The “benefit of the doubt” is gone. The “willingness to find common ground” is gone. The “general faith in the goodness of human nature” is gone. What’s left is an emotion who’s primal force is a Refusal to be Appeased. (And I’m not saying men don’t do it, too, but men generally don’t do it to other men, so I haven’t experienced it. I think men who do eventually end up handcuffed over the hood of a police cruiser.) All the milk in Wisconsin doesn’t seem to help.
But if you’re enraged at my answers, I’ll send a goofy-looking guy over with some milk.
ARE YOU CALLING ME FAT?!?!?!
Kidding. The milk ad is actually part of a campaign that suggested guy buy milk b/c it helps with symptoms of PMS.
Sorry, I was calling you fat.
The ads play on exagerrations of the truth. Yeah… I know some guys that put up with a lot of… stuff… they really don’t want to be bothered with because it guarantees them time on the golf course (their version of a cool car), but generally ads like these are for meant to be funny in an over-the-top way to get guys attention. We are not sitting around waiting for a good reason to buy a Klondike Bar, but if the commercial makes us laugh it will stay on our minds so that we’ll consider the purchase if we see it in the store.
Yes these are insulting to woman… particularly to the ones who don’t like and don’t exhibit the extremes of the behavior. But commercials like the Phoebe Cates one (which sooooo misses The Cars music as she gets out the pool) generally play during male oriented TV shows, so the ration of alienated females is low compared to the number of men who will associate that car with the young Ms. Cates. Also, yes, sometimes they are insulting to men… Particularly the ones that show expensive cars racing around a woman’s beach volleyball game for 25 seconds, then show a man grilling food daydreaming that scenario the last five seconds, then they show the name of the grill… and you realize it was a grill commercial. The result is, no one buys the grill because they obviously didn’t think it was good enough to introduce in the first 25 seconds. The bottom line is, there are enough men who don’t respect women that they become a marketable demographic. I definitely don’t believe its the majority of men, but it’s a large enough group that its worth making a commercial for.
And finally, yes, you can have sexy fatigue. I can’t give you an example off the top of my head, but it does happen.
For the record, about 80% of my dress shirts come from JC Penney. And i don’t where JCP shirts so I can stare at Phoebe Cates, I wear them so she can stare at me! (’cause she’s still kinda hawt)/ It hasn’t happened yet, but when it does, all that shopping will have been worth it.
I like that in the end of your post you ask “Why are you so afraid of us?”….Where did that come from?…..Those commercials are hilarious. Although they are an exaggeration from how some guys feel I have heard some married men say they would be able to listen to their wife for five seconds if they knew they could receive a klondike bar in the end….ha Just serious!
What I would like is a Woman who enjoys her own life without me because I really enjoy mine…I want a woman who doesn’t need me, but wants me…a woman who doesn’t want a cookie cutter type existence to compare herself to the rest of society by… I want a woman who thinks for herself, is independent, and drives me crazy by just being herself….
The first commercial appeals to me because I choose not to listen to women anymore. I won’t listen to them unless I know I’m getting something out of it, and this is a conscious decision on my part. I’m a good listener but, in my experience, women don’t listen in return. When I want to express my thoughts and my feelings the response I get are: “man up”, “stop crying”, “you’re like a little girl”, “stop being a bitch”, “you’re so sensitive”, etc. And this is not a racial thing; I get it from women of different races. Women have a claim on sensitivity and emotional expression where we, men, are expected to adjust, be good listeners, in order to satisfy their need to be listened to. It takes a lot of work to listen to someone and be supportive but not everyone has to do it. That’s right, women don’t have to listen. It’s not expected of them, so they can just shut a guy up by calling him terms that make him feel effeminate for wanting to express himself. To express myself I turn to my writing or blogs like these and leave long a** comments.
For the rest of the commercials I would argue that they’re based on research. For example, the JC Penny commercial I’m sure appeals to women too; notice the strongly built men modeling the clothes. It’s beneficial to appeal to women in these commercials because studies show that men don’t shop; it’s the wives and girlfriends who do the shopping for the men in their lives.
Sexy fatigue? Yes, if the video exceeds a certain amount of time then it has to engage the viewer on an intellectual level. However, commercials are short, so we don’t look to invest in the characters, so they can get away with sexiness overload.
Overall, I think these commercials work because they play on our primal instincts. I’m not even into cars, but my heart just started racing at the end of that Charger commercial. And I could see myself driving it with you in the passenger seat!
I’m really sorry you’ve run into such mean women. I’ve never told a guy that and my girlfriends and I are usually waiting for our guys to be more open.
On some level or another all of these ads insults the intelligence. The JCPenny add dosn’t get me because one, I do like quality clothes and two, I’m not into skinny white women. (Black guy who likes black girls here.)
I find theese ads highly offending because all the guys are similar to my older brother who used to beat my ass when we were younger, or to my school mates who used to beat my ass. When they didn’t beat my ass they had the urge to express their manliness and manly ideas. Thus I ended up finding male role models in long dead people who wore weird dresses, had long hair and ruled over the masses of ‘very manly men’.
Also when I watched the 4. Respecting People part I held my head in shock. I used to work as a messenger with my bike and very manly men used to attack me verbally or with their cars in a histerical manner. Now I know why: I had long hair just like their wife has.
Last time I watched facebook together with my sister she showed me some ‘white trash’ girls posing half naked and asked me what is my opinion, I answered that I was too busy watching the nude parts of them so I didn’t really made up my mind yet.
I believe we males are simpletons. Live with it! ❤