Super Bowl Advertisers Hate Men and Women

I watch a lot of football, both regular season and post-season. I'm also in possession of two X-chromosomes. I understand that most football commercials aren't produced with viewers like me in mind. Throughout the season I tend to tune football commercials out, as I am not currently in the market for a new truck and find Budweiser to be unpalatable.

However, the Super Bowl is a different animal. Super Bowl commercials are largely touted to be as must-see as the game, and advertisers generally mold their spots accordingly. Forbes.com reported that 39% of the viewers of the 2009 Super Bowl were women. With almost 40% of the Super Bowl audience being female, advertisers usually can't afford to ignore or insult such a large percentage of their audience. This year, however, ad agencies must have forgotten about this completely.

2010's Super Bowl commercials were sub-par in general, but there was one alarming trend. Many of the commercials were simultaneously hostile towards women and demeaning towards men. Here are some of the worst offenders:

Bridgestone Tires:

In this "clever" commercial, a man is ordered to choose between his Bridgestone tires or his "life" (which he mishears as "wife") in an odd sci-fi post-apocalyptic setting. The protagonist then roughly shoves his (super-model) wife out of his car, while she stands looking terrified and confused.

I suppose the joke here is supposed to be akin to the old "take my wife, please" jokes, and the audience is supposed to understand that the tires are more valuable than a woman. I can't imagine any woman (again, 40% of the audience) would laugh along with that one.

Budweiser:

In this spot, we see a man willing to put up with a women's book club just to get some beer. Along the way he flirts (badly) with his girlfriend's fellow club-member and tosses the book aside.

I guess the point here is that men hate reading, but will when there is beer around? Or is the point that men will tolerate girly things like book clubs to get beer? Either way, it paints men as illiterate creeps. Which I'm sure they all appreciate.

Flo TV:

I'm not going to lie, this commercial confuses me. In it a man is stuck lingerie shopping with his girlfriend instead of watching the football game like he wants. Jim Nantz comes on to berate the man for letting his girlfriend steal his spine, and tells him to lose his skirt. The product is a mobile handheld television, which would allow the guy to watch the football game while being dragged around by his girlfriend.

Here's what I don't understand. If the man in the commercial didn't want to go shopping with his girlfriend, why didn't he politely decline? And what straight man looks that unhappy while watching his girlfriend pretend to model lingerie?

The theme of the commercial, of course, is that women are controlling and men are pathetic. I can't think of any reason why an advertiser would think insulting men and women at the same time is a smart marketing move.

Dodge Charger:

Perhaps the worst example of bad Super Bowl commercials of the night comes courtesy of Dodge. In this spot, a narrator goes over a list of things men (who all look dead-eyed and sad) tolerate from women. Included in this list are things like holding lip gloss, watching vampire shows, speaking at appropriate moments, eating fruit, and hearing insults about their friends. The final point is that men can salvage what's left of their humanity by driving a Charger.

Wait, hold up a second. A person tells you when to speak and what to say, and berates your friends? I'm sorry, but you're in an abusive relationship and a Dodge Charger isn't going to solve that. I think a divorce attorney or marriage counselor is a better use of your money. Honestly, if someone saps your will to live, maybe you shouldn't be with that person.

The underlying message of this commercial is that women are soul-sucking, abusive harpies and that men can't stand up for themselves. Charming.

There were some genuinely good commercials this year, though. Volkswagen's Punch-Dub commercial was cute, as was IBM's robot commercial, Google's sweet and effective Paris commercial, and the hilarious commercial for The Late Show, which starred David Letterman, Oprah, and an unexpected Jay Leno.

Sources:
Women in the FanHouse. Forbes.