Mysandry in Adertising

This is just a little humor piece I wrote over a year ago and has been sitting in a folder on my computer.


I have been noticing a rather disturbing trend in television commercials lately. All of the major advertising agencies seem to have made a final decision about what all romantic relationships must be. There has to be a man who couldn’t keep an ant farm afloat much less run his own life and a crone of a woman whose only source of joy is the smug, self-satisfaction she derives from mocking him.
For example, there is a commercial in which a woman picks up a motorcyclist, presumably a stranger. It turns out the man is her husband and too dumb to figure out that he would have to put fuel in the machine. She says to their child, “Daddy just had to get a motorcycle, didn’t he?”
Or, there’s a new one in which a couple is buying a car and the husband can’t focus on what the salesman is saying because he is simply fascinated with the motorized seat.
My personal favorite is a bank commercial with a mother and a daughter discussing their respective husband and father’s search for a decent, worthwhile bank. The duo of shrews, eyes rolling uncontrollably into their heads, say things like, “Earth to Walter!!!”
There’s one thing that bothers me more that anything else on this topic. Why can’t I get a job at an advertising firm? I could totally do that. Check out this idea for a new Coke campaign:
Camera opens on two women sitting in a restaurant.
The mother says, “My husband is stupid.”
“Yeah. Dad’s a real moron.”
“How does anybody even get that dumb?”
“Mom, you might as well ask if the universe will keep expanding. Nobody knows.”
“Well, Eunice certainly doesn’t, that’s for sure.”
Then you see the Coke logo. If those guys had the prescience to hook their wagon to my star, we could finally put Pepsi out of business for good.
I have another problem with it that is unattached to my rather unshakable desire to be obscenely wealthy. It’s the disturbing trend that that has me so annoyed I've somehow let myself use the tired cliché, “disturbing trend.”
To be honest, the situation itself is more unfortunate than disturbing. No doubt such relationships exist. What I find disturbing is that we haven’t sloughed off this atavism yet. This idea that women are superior to men, in some way. It’s a powdered-wig sort of wisdom, a throwback to the days when women occupied the highest stratum of slavery. This was done without shackles or horse whips but with the occasional fuzzy logic of, “Hey, thanks for everything. I hope you realize that you are in this inferior social position because, now try to follow me here, you are actually superior. Unlike you, we are a bunch of bumbling oafs and the world would fall apart if you weren’t below us, acting as a sort of foundation.”
And all the women thought, “Wow, imagine that, spending Election Day scrubbing floors makes me noble and good. I’ll let those morons thing they are running the world. If they only knew the chaos that would ensue should I stop making tuna casserole.”
It was a good run but a few women were bound to wake up and say, “Wait just one cotton pickin’ minute. This makes no sense. It’s just tuna, noodles and a can of soup. I want to join the workforce and do something interesting. And, god help me, if I get passed over for a promotion I deserve, it had better be because the company has a high paying client with an unemployed idiot son, NOT because I’m a woman.”
And so they did. Now, we’ve climbed higher than those first few women ever suspected. We've reached the point where some women get passed over for promotion they deserve because the high paying client has an idiot daughter. If that's not the pinnacle, I don't know what is.
There are women in the white house making mistakes that cost thousands of lives right alongside the men. We’re out there having affairs and getting jailed for tax fraud with the best of them. We took up arms and proved that you men might well be a bunch of bumbling idiots but, damn it, so are we.
So, why do we continue with this charade? I know nobody is buying it. I’m sure the guys out there would be more than willing to live without the constant insults. I can’t speak for all the women in the world but I, for one, don’t want the kind of pressure associated with feeling like I have to be right all the time. That’s the kind of thing that causes eating disorders.
We need to stop this and the only way I see to do it is through a nation-wide boycott of any company that advertises its product by making it seem as though women are superior to men. This is something I am more than willing to do. That is unless, of course, the Coca-Cola Company starts returning my calls.

Repost with chapter spacing.



I have been noticing a rather disturbing trend in television commercials lately. All of the major advertising agencies seem to have made a final decision about what all romantic relationships must be. There has to be a man who couldn’t keep an ant farm afloat much less run his own life and a crone of a woman whose only source of joy is the smug, self-satisfaction she derives from mocking him.

For example, there is a commercial in which a woman picks up a motorcyclist, presumably a stranger. It turns out the man is her husband and too dumb to figure out that he would have to put fuel in the machine. She says to their child, “Daddy just had to get a motorcycle, didn’t he?”

Or, there’s a new one in which a couple is buying a car and the husband can’t focus on what the salesman is saying because he is simply fascinated with the motorized seat.

My personal favorite is a bank commercial with a mother and a daughter discussing their respective husband and father’s search for a decent, worthwhile bank. The duo of shrews, eyes rolling uncontrollably into their heads, say things like, “Earth to Walter!!!”

There’s one thing that bothers me more that anything else on this topic. Why can’t I get a job at an advertising firm? I could totally do that. Check out this idea for a new Coke campaign:

Camera opens on two women sitting in a restaurant.
The mother says, “My husband is stupid.”
“Yeah. Dad’s a real moron.”
“How does anybody even get that dumb?”
“Mom, you might as well ask if the universe will keep expanding. Nobody knows.”
“Well, Eunice certainly doesn’t, that’s for sure.”
Then you see the Coke logo. If those guys had the prescience to hook their wagon to my star, we could finally put Pepsi out of business for good.

I have another problem with it that is unattached to my rather unshakable desire to be obscenely wealthy. It’s the disturbing trend that that has me so annoyed I've somehow let myself use the tired cliché, “disturbing trend.”

To be honest, the situation itself is more unfortunate than disturbing. No doubt such relationships exist. What I find disturbing is that we haven’t sloughed off this atavism yet. This idea that women are superior to men, in some way. It’s a powdered-wig sort of wisdom, a throwback to the days when women occupied the highest stratum of slavery. This was done without shackles or horse whips but with the occasional fuzzy logic of, “Hey, thanks for everything. I hope you realize that you are in this inferior social position because, now try to follow me here, you are actually superior. Unlike you, we are a bunch of bumbling oafs and the world would fall apart if you weren’t below us, acting as a sort of foundation.”

And all the women thought, “Wow, imagine that, spending Election Day scrubbing floors makes me noble and good. I’ll let those morons thing they are running the world. If they only knew the chaos that would ensue should I stop making tuna casserole.”

It was a good run but a few women were bound to wake up and say, “Wait just one cotton pickin’ minute. This makes no sense. It’s just tuna, noodles and a can of soup. I want to join the workforce and do something interesting. And, god help me, if I get passed over for a promotion I deserve, it had better be because the company has a high paying client with an unemployed idiot son, NOT because I’m a woman.”

And so they did. Now, we’ve climbed higher than those first few women ever suspected. We've reached the point where some women get passed over for promotion they deserve because the high paying client has an idiot daughter. If that's not the pinnacle, I don't know what is.

There are women in the white house making mistakes that cost thousands of lives right alongside the men. We’re out there having affairs and getting jailed for tax fraud with the best of them. We took up arms and proved that you men might well be a bunch of bumbling idiots but, damn it, so are we.

So, why do we continue with this charade? I know nobody is buying it. I’m sure the guys out there would be more than willing to live without the constant insults. I can’t speak for all the women in the world but I, for one, don’t want the kind of pressure associated with feeling like I have to be right all the time. That’s the kind of thing that causes eating disorders.

We need to stop this and the only way I see to do it is through a nation-wide boycott of any company that advertises its product by making it seem as though women are superior to men. This is something I am more than willing to do. That is unless, of course, the Coca-Cola Company starts returning my calls.