marketing of masculinity

Alda's prominence in the enormously successful M*A*S*H gave him a platform to speak out on political topics, and he has been a strong and vocal supporter of women's rights and the Feminist Movement. He co-chaired, with former First Lady Betty Ford, the ERA Countdown campaign. In 1976, the Boston Globe dubbed him "the quintessential Honorary Woman: a feminist icon" for his activism on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment.

http://www.google.com/search?q=alan+alda+sensitive+man

Mix of self-styling and marketing, looks like. Same as true as in any era

xp

yeah further down the class ladder if you don't dress down to your level you're some kind of weirdo (at best.) there was this guy i knew in college who wore three-piece suits every day (with pocketwatch!) and carried a leather briefcase. i'm sure every college has one guy like that. anyway, he was definitely considered weird but he was just a normal guy who liked suits.

hmm i think the alan alda guy is a descendant of the bob hope guy, but instead of a mouthy dickhead barely hanging on in a world of better men, he's a mouthy dickhead getting away with everything, cos the better men are all fakes.

lol boomers, lol writers. dream on!

let's all just agree as the greeks did that having an meekly uncircumsized penis exemplifies masculine virtue and that having an bulbous, exposed glans is strictly for slaves, foreigners, and other lowly sorts

lol omar went to school with M. White

haha comment avez-vous deviné ? ;-)

polidicks of glansing xxpost

there was this guy i knew in college who wore three-piece suits every day

there have only been a few occasions in my life in which I have been in a suit

but I kind of enjoyed it, I felt v. classy / had a spring in my step

I would probably enjoy dressing like a swingin' playboy from time to time, and I sure think the guy you described had guts to dress the way he did with the briefcase & whatnot

but as fun as it would be for me personally it just wouldn't be worth labeling myself as "that guy"

i.e. that guy who wears a three piece suit

unless I was a famous musician in which case I could possibly get away with it

this is what I would listen to if I wore khakis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8PSYorL1cE

i usually get asked why "i got all dressed up" whenever i put on a goddamn necktie. standards are that low.

The cafeteria lady at my job asked me why I was all dressed up one day. Because I'm at work!

She's incredibly good people though.

i just had lunch with a bunch of co-workers and one of them wore an oversized tweed sportcoat and everyone's like "heyyyy you got an interview or something???"

an interview....with destiny!!!

a stripper he had met the night before

every single office i've worked in, when anyone dresses up it's like "lol interview!"

"wore three-piece suits every day (with pocketwatch!)"

the pocketwatch is insane but this is otherwise standard business school attire lotsa places.

http://www.lovingit.co.uk/images/2007-07_yorkie-vans.jpg

every single office i've worked in, when anyone dresses up it's like "lol interview!"

Every time someone does that to me, I stop and say, "No, no, court appearance," and walk away. Generally, they don't bug me about it afterwards.

"i'm being tried for murder : |"

Michael White is the living example of a quote I have stuck to my wall: "I don't deserve credit for turning the other cheek because my tongue is always in it."

http://www.blogadilla.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/dangerousbook4boys.jpg

i know this is more kid-aimed, but it seems def like preparing for some idealized manhood

I feel ashamed for thinking it, but they really need some noms de plume.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGI8IRXRqpo

Geez, what a pussy!

I always wear a tie when I'm giving a lecture. I figure if over 60 people are going to look at you for an hour, then you could make an effort.

i wear a tie when im having sex

I came out the womb wearing a tie

xx-post you realize you have basically described jabba the hutt rite

― it's like 10,000 goons when all you need is a trife (m bison), Wednesday, December 9, 2009 2:23 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

tbf jabba was pretty pimp

Michael White is the living example of a quote I have stuck to my wall: "I don't deserve credit for turning the other cheek because my tongue is always in it."

― WHY DON'T YOU JUST LICK THE BUS DIRECTLY (Laurel), Wednesday, December 9, 2009 3:57 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hahaha

re: "The Dangerous Book for Boys"

my kid brother has that book, and let me tell you it's boring

it mostly consists of various diagrams of swiss army knives

dangerous, hah!

i really dont care abt quiche and khakis or whatever else is supposed to signify u meaty and awesome - if men have some little coffee drink and it makes them happy im down w/that - however there are some aspects of our society which deviate from traditional stoic masculinity in a way id rather not deal with

particularly the tendency of guys my age and younger to bond over pop culture in a formal near religious manner - so much nervous energy expended over dudes making sure they have the same opinion of and know all the lines from caddyshack

and it extends beyond pop culture sharing to some wider constant checking in that i cant quite articulate rite now - like dude dude did u see that chick she was awesome rite she was awesome remember that one chick omg yes remember her ok ok - dnw this bro culture neediness

id rather gaze mysteriously toward the horizon

I'm not sure that either of those is much of a deviation from old-school manliness. Memorizing/geeking out on pop culture is a modern variation on being knowledgeable about, I dunno, hunting or how to fix a riding lawnmower or whatever. Most of society has been removed from those kinds of tasks, so the communal knowledge that gets you into the man-group has changed.

Comparing penis size (either "look how hot my wench is" or "man I want that wench, she so fine) is pretty standard in history, too.

I think an early Bloom County strip mentions this explicitly.

― kingfish, Wednesday, December 9, 2009 2:19 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i remember this!

eh i feel like maybe there used to be some standard of not being so openly needy abt these things - u just grunt and nod xp

What David Altschiller, at Hill, Holliday/Altschiller, in Manhattan, liked about the spots, for example, was that the hero was naïve: in neither case did he know that he had on nice pants until a gorgeous woman told him so. Naïveté, Altschiller stressed, is critical. Several years ago, he did a spot for Claiborne for Men cologne in which a great-looking guy in a bar, wearing a gorgeous suit, was obsessing neurotically about a beautiful woman at the other end of the room: "I see this woman. She's perfect. She's looking at me. She's smiling. But wait. Is she smiling at me? Or laughing at me? . . . Or looking at someone else?" You'd never do this in an ad for women's cologne. Can you imagine? "I see this guy. He's perfect. Ohmigod. Is he looking at me?" In women's advertising, self-confidence is sexy. But if a man is self-confident-if he knows he is attractive and is beautifully dressed- then he's not a man anymore. He's a fop. He's effeminate. The cologne guy had to be neurotic or the ad wouldn't work. "Men are still abashed about acknowledging that clothing is important," Altschiller said. "Fashion can't be important to me as a man. Even when, in the first commercial, the waiter says 'Nice pants,' it doesn't compute to the guy wearing the nice pants. He's thinking, What do you mean, 'Nice pants'?"

― max, Wednesday, December 9, 2009 6:11 AM (14 hours ago) Bookmark

max quoting an article on advertising

but both the author and the interviewee are being a bit disingenuous, imo. i don't believe that advertisers of this era were simply noticing that men were not fashion-conscious. they were instead deliberately attempting to encourage a degree of neurosis in men in order to manipulate them into relying on products. the hook of the cologne ad is that the guy's self-doubt is relatable. in his slightly comical neurosis about his own attractiveness, he mimics the target viewer's doubts. so a connection in forged. and that probably works as a selling point, especially in a more-self conscious era.

but it also reinforces a much more basic psychological dynamic: that to be male is to feel inadequate about one's appeal to the opposite sex, and that to buy the proper grooming product is to assuage this anxiety. and advertisers KNOW that. they certainly know that about female consumers. ads for women's beauty products aren't based on the idea that female consumers DO feel "confident" about their looks. they're based entirely on the idea that they don't. they therefore don't instill confidence, they undercut it. and then they offer to sell it back to you. and that's exactly what's going on in the cologne ad.

in initially encouraging this kind of neurosis in men, advertisers probably had to depict it quite literally. thus the man is actually shown expressing doubt about himself. in this sense, it's a very primitive, first-stage ad of its type. ads selling sex appeal to women don't have to show her feeling self-conscious - due to decades (centuries) of fashion & beauty industry messages telling women that they aren't sufficiently attractive to begin with, advertisers can simply count on a profound degree of female self-doubt.

a little later on, as in our era, male doubt (like female doubt) can simply be assumed. now that "male consumers" have been buffeted by a few decades of conflicting, manipulative "you're not good enough" messages, it can be safely assumed that they are neurotic and confused about their own standing as men. ads can simply suggest that to buy this product will quell that confusion, will make you a real man. so it doesn't surprise me that we're seeing a lot of such messages.

dude

: /

?

!

My favorite marketed for men product = MAN TISSUES

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3207/2405941831_eb1ccafca7.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2240/2405942091_f9e1d13579.jpg

they were instead deliberately attempting to encourage a degree of neurosis in men in order to manipulate them into relying on products

OTM

LOLOLOLOLOL @ man-tissues

"LET'S FACE IT YOU LIKE WANKING"

Strong, Soft, Sorted.

british only?

Soaks all those spills, and is still kind on you

btw when product marketers attempt to produce poetry or little short stories on their products, baby Jesus cries

id rather gaze mysteriously toward the horizon

http://www.canvasreplicas.com/images/Wanderer%20Above%20the%20Sea%20of%20Fog%20Caspar%20David%20Friedrich.jpg