Despite my tendency to pick apart commercials, I didn’t watch the Super Bowl. Prime opportunity missed! Football’s just not my thing, I guess. I did see the following Super Bowl ad yesterday, though:
Okay, now, admittedly some of the slapstick ways these guys are getting smacked is a bit funny, if you’re into that kind of thing. I love physical comedy when it works. My issue with this commercial is more about the fact they’re using the mythical tough-guy male trope, which I won’t really go into here (but feel free to discuss), and the tag line.
Really? Pepsi had to create a special diet soda that was “manly” enough for a man’s “manly” needs? So a man not wanting to consume a ton of sugar or load on the extra calories from regular soda is so different from a woman choosing her soft drink for the same reasons that Pepsi Max had to be marketed gender-specifically? Does this mean that I, as a woman, shouldn’t purchase this soda? It’s too tough for me? I’d be safer purchasing their standard diet option.
I wonder what men who’ve wanted diet soda for years have done in the face of not having a product suitable for their tough-guy needs.
What am I missing here, dear readers? Please, someone enlighten me.
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It reminds me of the classic response to “real men don’t eat quiche”, which is “real men eat whatever the hell they want.”
I’m finally starting to see the pattern between this and all the “Men, come eat GREASY MEAT behind your nagging wives’ backs” commercials from the fast food industry: evidently, making thoughtful eating choices has been branded as a female behavior. And when men engage in female behaviors, they risk being accused of girliness.
You know, if there are men to whom being accused of girliness really is a more scary proposition than wrecking the only body they have, maybe we should use this product as a litmus test, locate these men, and put them in a safe, quarantined environment where they can live out their lives without potentially influencing sane people.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I really ought to tell the guys I know who prefer diet soda that they’re not manly because of it.
I truly hate that almost everything marketed as “diet” is apparently for women only. Why are only women seen as being concerned with healthy eating? Shouldn’t that be a universal thing?
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
My comment at the party upon seeing this commercial was “Pepsi Max: The first diet soda that just might kill you.” I’ll stick with sodas that aren’t analogized having a bowling ball dropped on your head.
More seriously, I’m guessing they’ve got market research that there are some potential customers that view diet soda as too ‘feminine’ for them to drink. Shame they’re trying to overcome it by just creating a ‘masculine’ drink.
Greg Sanders(Quote) (Reply)
Pepsi Max is the only diet soda that’s as sweet as the nondiet version. So to make men want sweetness, they have to overcompensate by making it seem more manly in other ways. Or something.
Somebody, somewhere, doesn’t want men thinking too much. Left to our own devices, we might hear what a woman has to say and think, “She’s right.” Scary.
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
But outside the snark:
… it’s unutterably depressing that “manly” behaviour is so strongly conflated with defeating women. But what else could it be in the cult of masculinity?
And putting those together, that construct requires the nascent man to stop following his mother’s example (hers, since she’s the one raising him according to this picture); he has to “defeat” her influence over him. Depressing.
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
I have to agree with Greg. Even if I did like cola, I wouldn’t drink one that is equated with receiving life-threatening injuries at the hands of my thoughtless friends.
Also, my older brother has been drinking diet soda for years now. He’s married and works primarily in manual labor jobs, two traditional hallmarks of “manliness”. He started buying diet soda in order to a) lose some weight, and b) get used to the taste, since genetics has pretty much doomed us to a future of type-2 diabetes. (I don’t drink soda enough to bother with diet yet, but I did switch to artificial sweetener in my morning coffee.) He’s succeeded in both goals — he’ll never be skinny, but he’s certainly a much healthier size now. As far as he can tell, it’s not only because the soda itself has fewer calories, but also because it doesn’t contain high fructose corn syrup, so he’s not snacking as much. And despite what those new commercials say, HFSC is not the same as sugar. Sugar doesn’t block the chemical signal that tells you that you’re full and should stop eating. [/tangent]
@Jennifer: “real men eat whatever the hell they want.”
Amen, sister. Real women, too.
Robin(Quote) (Reply)
Yeah. I can’t get it to compute, either. Especially since just about everyone I know who used to drink regular soda and has either switched to diet or gone off it completely quickly recovers from the sugar (HFCS over here) addiction. I used to drink a bottle of Mt. Dew every day. Now I very rarely get a craving for one, and when I indulge I can’t finish a quarter of it. Too sweet.
Rambly McRambly is rambling.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
It is pretty ridiculous. I suppose it’s not unlike alcoholic girly drinks. Like a guy can’t enjoy a Cosmo now and then? Apparently not. It’s too emasculating to be seen drinking such a colorful concoction.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
See, the irony in this commercial for me is that:
[painful thing happens]
I’m good! I’m fine.
is me to a T. I do it all the time, with my 5’4″ XX-chromosome self. So does my sister, who is 5’3″ and blonde as the day is long.
Gender stereotype fail, as the macro-makers would say.
DragonLady
DragonLadyK(Quote) (Reply)
Seems to me like Pepsi just grew jealous of Coca Cola’s oh-so-manly Coca Cola Zero and and their whole “life as it should be” nonsense, so they made their own manly ad…
Oneiriad(Quote) (Reply)
Don’t even get me started on the “it’s fine in moderation” schtick they’ve got going. Of course it is, but how on earth is someone on a tight budget supposed to moderate their intake of it when all the food they can afford contains HFCS? It’s in places you just wouldn’t even think about. Like many breads. Cereals. Anything processed and packaged and cheap is HFCS heaven.
But that’s a totally different topic. Heh.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
Me too. Last year I really jacked up my back, and though I was hunched over and clearly not all right I was all, “I’m good. Really, I’m fine!” Hehe.
Coworker: You don’t look fine.
Me: I’ve had worse.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
Oh, of course the product and ad campaign is a direct response to their primary competition’s product.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
@DragonLadyK: “is me to a T. I do it all the time, with my 5′4″ XX-chromosome self. So does my sister, who is 5′3″ and blonde as the day is long.”
Yeah, me too. I mucked up my knee a couple weeks ago while skiing (on a trail I wasn’t really properly warmed up for). I tried to convince my friends that I could make it to the base on my own, but it wouldn’t hold me up for more than a hundred feet or so. In the end, I had to sit on my ass in a snowbank while one of them went for the ski patrol. :-\
@sbg: “Don’t even get me started on the “it’s fine in moderation” schtick they’ve got going.
…
But that’s a totally different topic. Heh.”
It is. Still pisses me, though.
Robin(Quote) (Reply)
In terms of sbg’s comment that everything “diet” is marketed at women, I don’t think it’s necessarily that healthy eating is feminine, but that dieting is feminine. That is, being concerned with one’s weight, losing weight, needing to watch what one is eating to stave off fat, etc. – these are all things women are (culturally speaking) supposed to be concerned with, not men. Thus, the thinking goes, diet soda is for women because women need to lose weight, and therefore special marketing is needed to sell diet soda to men.
Nina(Quote) (Reply)
You’re right, Nina. That there was me trying to make the “target diet items to women” seem better than it actually is.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
Heh, and here I was thinking that it was a pretty soung analogy given the migraines that most of the artifical sweeteners in diet sodas give me and so many others. Truth in advertising taken to a ridiculous extreme!
Not that I’m supporting ridiculous gender differences, but entertaining anecdotal evidence: when I smashed my ankle several years ago, the orthopedic surgeon who pieced it back together once made an offhand comment about women handling pain better than men. This comment came after he examined three toes on my good foot that I’d broken a few days before with one of my crutches, and had simply taped up myself since they weren’t out of alignment and there wasn’t anything else anyone could do anyway. (Though it could explain how I managed to refrain from killing or even yelling at the tech who dropped an x-ray plate on the broken ankle in the ER.)
MaggieCat(Quote) (Reply)
See, that actually makes sense. A woman’s body is designed to push something the size of a watermelon out a hole the size of a lemon, and epidurals haven’t been around for even a century: if a woman’s brain wasn’t keen on endorphin production, humanity would have died out by now. ~.^
I think it’s ironic that The Cult of Masculinity’s beloved pain tolerance is mostly biological: either your body coughs up the goods, or it doesn’t.
DragonLady
DragonLadyK(Quote) (Reply)
Hmm. You would think in a society where women are generally encouraged to eat in a healthy manner and men are generally discouraged from doing so, the women would outlive the men.
Oh, wait. We do.
ACW(Quote) (Reply)
Dammit, ACW, you’ve revealed the big sekrit feminist conspiracy all the right-wing talk radio menz is always talking about!
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Hi, I’m new to this site and I enjoy the articls and comments a lot.
@women and pain
I always thought that women could handle pain better. Recently I came upon two interesting articles, an older and a more recent one: http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=51160
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1048863/Women-DONT-higher-pain-threshold-men.html
Scientists tend to prove a lot of things but chances are high that a few years later someone will come along and prove exactly the opposite.
I think I can handle pain pretty well, in fact a bit too well. I once endured a pretty bad cystitis because I was to afraid to go to the doctor. Pretty stupid if you ask me now.
Bleaksilence(Quote) (Reply)
Nina said: “I don’t think it’s necessarily that healthy eating is feminine, but that dieting is feminine. ”
Well, a lot of recent fast food ads seem to play to the idea that men need to ditch their nagging wives and go eat something dripping with grease instead of the salad she’s pushing at them. (I know we discussed one such commercial, but can’t find it now – must’ve been in comments.) So it seems at least some marketers are assuming their male target audience thinks health food is something nagging women force on men…?
Bleaksilence, that’s an ongoing scientific debate because at the end of the day, you can’t try on two bodies and measure how each feels.
Apparently, women have more nerve endings in their skin (particularly in certain areas) than men have. According to current understanding, this means if you inflicted an identical blow on a man and woman, the woman would feel it much more. Which makes it amazing women can tolerate anything resembling the same injuries as men with the same or better fortitude. Last I heard, scientists have no idea what it all means, and were generating hypotheses to check into. There’s obviously far more to how a body processes pain than how many nerve endings it has – someone who suffers chronic pain, for example, develops a much higher tolerance for pain than someone who doesn’t. Maybe having so many more nerve endings forces a similar compensation? Who knows?
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Yeah, I thought about it too. It’s almost impossible to compare it.
btw, I really love reading this blog, it’s great! Unlike other sites, that talk about feminism, gender roles etc this blog really manages to stay relevant, doesn’t overreact and isn’t downright anti-male. Other blogs I’ve read tend to overanalyse or condemn readers who try to defend the male’s point of view. I remember a post about a showmaster (iirc) who sexually aussaulted a woman in frot of the the audience (touched her breasts etc) He also allegedly fingered her. No one actually saw what really was happening though. The blog author insisted that it was rape and everyone who disagreed was automatically marked a pro rapist.
I hope that was easy to understand, English isn’t my mother tongue so I might have used some words incorrectly. If you get offended it’s probably because of my English skills.
Bleaksilence(Quote) (Reply)
Bleaksilence, glad you’re enjoying the site! This is off-topic, but I just want to address this since you brought it up: it was a comedian who did that, and groping someone without permission is, by legal definition, “sexual assault.” The term sexual assault refers to ANY non-consensual sexual contact. I think you may be making a distinction between the terms rape and sexual assault, but they are generally used interchangeably these days. The blogger may have been using the term “rape” to make sure people understood that what he did was serious and not necessarily any less traumatic than, say, forcible penetration.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I looked for the original article on the site but I can’t seem to find it. But I remember the details now.
That might have been the case, yes. But sexual asault can include any nonconsensual act including rape, while rape most likely refers to forced intercourse.
Just so were clear, I think it’s horrible what he did and with what he got away with, but I wouldn’t call him a rapist. And I don’t understand why one can think I’m pro rapist just because I think that sexual assault is the more appropriate word for the discussion.
What I wanted to say actually was, that I just don’t like the attitude of some blogs, that won’t let you critique their point of view without starting a fight and who are too oversensitive.
I hope I was clear enough.
Bleaksilence(Quote) (Reply)
If it makes you feel any better to have company, I have not one but two friends who walked around all day (or days) with an appendix that had them steered into surgery immediately after they eventually went to the ER after work. Leading in one case to cries of “You went to work?” from the surgeon. Heh. (Both female, but all three of us have a disease that frequently causes severe abdominial pain, so there’s a tolerance factor there.)
One thing I noticed about the linked articles, particularly the Medicinenet one, is that they’re using “tolerance” differently than I would — which would be not the point at which discomfort is first registered, but the point at which pain becomes intolerable. Understandable since there’s absolutely no ethical way to test my definition, but it seems like the more relevant question and they aren’t neccesarily connected. One of the women with a ready to burst appendix shares my freakishly intense hatred for scratchy tags in clothing for example. (And I wouldn’t think using childbirth is a good point of reasoning for anything, since they still haven’t figured out all the roles hormones are playing there and there’s a difference between something the body is supposed to be able to do biologically and a massive injury (not that they’re mutally exclusive, but assuming the former is complication free).)
Wow, I drove this thread wildly off track, didn’t I?
MaggieCat(Quote) (Reply)
Bleaksilence, it’s true I’m not calling you pro-rapist, but only because I think you just don’t understand that rape and sexual assault as synonymous. A forcible groping is NO LESS WRONG than forcible intercourse. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether we call it rape or sexual assault because both are equally wrong and have the same potential for trauma. Perhaps the blogger used the term rape in an attempt to get you to understand this, since you seem to think groping and possibly fingering someone isn’t as awful as sticking your penis in them without consent. IT IS. Because it’s not the physical act that causes the trauma, but the realization that this person thinks your body is theirs for the taking. How “far” they go in “taking” it is irrelevant.
And let’s close this subject. It is off-topic. I’m just trying to let you know that you may eventually encounter the same attitude you’re complaining about here as you’ve encountered elsewhere because you are just plain misinformed about rape, and need more education on the topic if you want to continue discussing it. That’s probably what the other blogger was attempting to give you, and instead of learning from it, you got defensive and came here. We don’t talk about rape/sexual assault as often here as some blogs do, but believe me, if you try to say “Gosh, I think what he did was awful, but it was sexual assault and not rape” you’re going to get some requests for clarification, and then you’ll probably get your ass handed to you by people more eloquent on the subject than I.
Maggie, thank you. I knew something was bothering me about the articles! If indeed women have more nerve endings, then of course we should experience sensation more quickly/easily than men. But tolerance for pain absolutely needs to be a measure of when pain starts to impact your ability to go about your daily business, not the point at which you first become aware of it. And this is where the anecdotal belief is coming from – household after household where, when everyone gets sick, Mom continues somehow to put aside her own pain and continue caretaking and doing chores and everything, while Dad and the kids whine whine whine. Whether it’s cultural or biological, I doubt we’ll ever know – I have no question culture is involved. But while I am always very skeptical of claims that there are biologically hardwired behavior differences between men and women (you can’t test this properly until you raise a large sample group of humans in a complete cultural vacuum – perhaps by wolves – and then observe that, oh, hey, the girls still all like shoe shopping), I would actually not be stunned to learn that the gender that has evolved to give painful, painful birth has physical adaptations that allow her to handle pain differently. It would seem to make sense, as evolution sometimes does.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Thanks to you, Jenn, and Maggie – I was sitting here all day trying to come up with this or something like it in regards to those studies. I’m not sure it’s ever been a question of how much pain men can physically endure versus women, but simply how we do endure it.
The first thing I said when I learned one of my BILs had his appendix removed was, “Oh, dear. My poor sister.” Because that particular BIL makes it seem like a head cold is really Yersinia pestis and he’s going to die by sunset.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
No I didn’t come here to nag about other people. For me there’s a huge difference between rape and forcible groping but it doesn’t mean that I think one is worse.
e.g. http://www.rainn.org/get-information/types-of-sexual-assault/sexual-assault
I think it’s pretty rude to assume I don’t know anything about the concept of rape just because I’ve been using a word with another definition than you (and for which not even all states have the same definition)
That’s all I wanted to say. Yeah, let’s close the subject.
Bleaksilence(Quote) (Reply)
Don’t let’s fight. I think we all can agree that on the internet there are always going to be disagreements which stem at least partly from misunderstanding what is being said.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
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