marketing of masculinity

You don't order it tall, venti, or mocha, like your old lady does.

haha i love that starbucks seems to be the #1 foil in these ads

the #1 threat to american masculinity... is coffee from seattle

o i see you have a 'tall' coffee there... *derisive snort*

surely ordering a small coffee would make you a small-bladdered commie pinko anyway though

in my america coffee is weak, feminine and european

in my america, when you want to wake up, you shoot someone, and if no ones around, you shoot yourself

btw the best part of the dockers ad is the "shop women" punchline

You don't order it tall, venti, or mocha, like your old lady does a homo.

As if Italian words for coffee aren't masculine.

idk but the point is to feel cool when you buy them

The marketing idea behind Dockers, which made Levi's hundreds of millions of dollars and is probably responsible for the casual-izing of American offices, wasn't about cool or sexy; it was about someone saying "nice pants" and letting your head be full of decisions about stuff more important than clothes. Long article from '97 on how they did it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-anwu6EOjw

Dockers commercial at 1:00.

From Gladwell's article linked above:

The one ad in the "Nice Pants" campaign which isn't like the Bugle Boy spots is called "Motorcycle." In it a nice young man happens upon a gleaming Harley on a dark back street of what looks like downtown Manhattan. He strokes the seat and then, unable to contain himself, climbs aboard the bike and bounces up and down, showing off his Dockers (the "product shot") but accidentally breaking a mirror on the handlebar. He looks up. The Harley's owner-a huge, leather-clad biker-is looking down at him. The biker glowers, looking him up and down, and says, "Nice pants." Last shot: the biker rides away, leaving the guy standing on the sidewalk in just his underwear.

What's surprising about this ad is that, unlike "Vive la France" and "Subway Love," it does seem to cross the boundaries of acceptable sex talk. The rules of guy advertising so carefully observed in those spots-the fact that the hero has to be naïve, that he can't be too good-looking, that he can't get the girl, and that he can't be told anything stronger than "Nice pants"-are all, in some sense, reactions to the male fear of appearing too concerned with fashion, of being too pretty, of not being masculine. But what is "Motorcycle"? It's an ad about a sweet-looking guy down in the Village somewhere who loses his pants to a butch-looking biker in leather. "I got so much feedback at the time of 'Well, God, that's kind of gay, don't you think?' " Robert Hanson said. "People were saying, 'This buff guy comes along and he rides off with the guy's pants. I mean, what the hell were they doing?' It came from so many different people within the industry. It came from some of our most conservative retailers. But do you know what? If you put these three spots up-'Vive la France,' 'Subway Love,' and 'Motorcycle'-which one do you think men will talk about ad nauseam? 'Motorcycle.' It's No. 1. It's because he's really cool. He's in a really cool environment, and it's every guy's fantasy to have a really cool, tricked-out fancy motorcycle."

Hanson paused, as if he recognized that what he was saying was quite sensitive. He didn't want to say that men failed to pick up the gay implications of the ad because they're stupid, because they aren't stupid. And he didn't want to sound condescending, because Dockers didn't build a six-hundred-million-dollar business in five years by sounding condescending. All he was trying to do was point out the fundamental exegetical error in calling this a gay ad, because the only way for a Dockers man to be offended by "Motorcycle" would be if he thought about it with a little imagination, if he picked up on some fairly subtle cues, if he integrated an awful lot of detail. In other words, a Dockers man could only be offended if he did precisely what, according to Meyers-Levy, men don't do. It's not a gay ad because it's a guy ad. "The fact is," Hanson said, "that most men's interpretation of that spot is: You know what? Those pants must be really cool, because they prevented him from getting the shit kicked out of him."

Maybe they could have conveyed how desirable these jeans are by having the ad end with him getting the shit kicked out of him, but managing to keep his clothes on

we're not looking at this from the biker's perspective, imo.

You don't order it tall, venti, or mocha, like your old lady does a homo.

In this Meat Eating Manly Man worldview, ladies and homos are essentially the same thing.

wow a lot has changed in male-aimed advertising since that gladwell article!

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'?"

It's Time to Wear the Relaxed Fit Pants

xp take into account that if a guy is dressed magnificently and acts like he knows it, that's not necessarily a hugely attractive trait?

i mean more--compare what hes saying to the ketel one ad up top

I think the Ketel One ad still plays into male insecurities--you're not a man today (whether it's your fault or the world's) but last night...

living in a pre-clooney world

xp sure, i mean, of course it plays to insecurities--all advertising does--its just that altschiller is saying that the aspirational fantasy of the ad shouldnt be preening & self-confident, because (in 1997) men dont want to "care" about how they look. but the aspirational fantasy of the ketel one ad is all about preening self-confidence and caring how you look.

"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'?"

my point basically being that i dont think this is true anymore

I think at times the "be a MAN" schtick is kind of useful as a stand-in for "be an ADULT," -- something that's kind of useful in an era of prolonged childhood.

Yep! Also, my biggest objection to dudes "broing down" in the desert w dune buggies is that I want to go.

its maybe "useful" but turning it into "be a MAN" instead of "be a GROWN UP" means that its always being defined against women & gays which is hardly very nice

xx-post max i think it's still true in many dude circles, but def less true than before

i dont think its very true in natl television advertising!

But I think Clooney and Obama are steering us toward an ideal in which "be a man" doesn't mean against women and gays, and with that comes the confidence that we, and not just the Dekes, are men.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3599/3420371862_f8de0799e1_o.jpg

that would be great if i wasnt looking at an ad at the top of the screen that strikes me as defining masculinity very specifically against women and gays.

as does for that matter the ketel one ad

"use Playboy frequently"

xxx-post oh! well, yes. sry 2 misread u on that.

i'm with you on the "be a man" idea being a poor proxy for achieving adulthood, smacks of implying women are juvenile and/or incapabale of taking care of things, p regressive

OK the ad is obv BS, but about the grown-up vs "man" idea: you have to work this out for yrself. You are a man, some of us are women -- this is more than incidental to our identities, but what EXACTLY it means for us is personal. Once I was a woman who was not grown up, and now I is one who is.

nah you didnt misread, i was unclear--obviously there are large swaths of the population in a 1997 dont-care-about-my-appearance mindset

xp

What does it mean that we are supposed to "man up" but "bro down"??

man is v seriousss (suits, business), bro is fun (flip flops, dune buggies)

but laurel if you say "be a MAN" and you mean "be a MAN and not a WOMAN" youre necessarily implying that women are bad, or that being like a woman is bad.

Well maybe that's a common underlying intention in that phrase, but to me personally it's more like, "Be a man because you are one -- accept it and redefine it for yourself but live up to SOMETHING" and I will be a woman because I am one and ditto the above.

ok yeah but thats a way more complex and abstracted reading of the phrase than is ever encouraged by the ads

If I say, "be a MAN", I am implying that some other people with penises are not worthy to qualify as "men" by my standards, and I don't want you to be one of them.

Is that better/simpler? But anyway yeah I'm not arguing w you about advertising cos u right, and also I didn't grow up with the question of sufficient manliness hovering around me all the time and being oppressive.

what would you sell with this concept of MAN?

no i mean i see what youre saying laurel i just am still skeptical of the phrase partly cause i dont know how i feel about gender essentialism and susan faludi and fight club and all that shit

MEN WERE STRIPPED OF THEIR KHAKIS

^^doing the world a huge favor, btw

Khakis are nice to lounge around in, stfu.

: )

i'm with you on the "be a man" idea being a poor proxy for achieving adulthood, smacks of implying women are juvenile and/or incapabale of taking care of things, p regressive

don't agree with this at all- the more natural thing to draw from it is to be a man as opposed to being a boy, not a woman.

I like the Gap's 90s campaign to re-associate khakis with writers, Miles, etc. Men vs. drones.

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Images/jksm.gif

xp in certain contexts that might be true but its hard to pretend that the idea of man-as-opposed-to-woman doesnt inhere given that you know "man" is a gendered word

yeah actually eazy i think the gaps 90s campaign is the real harbinger for the ketel one type ad--and maybe even the dockers ad--with this whole 'lost era of american masculinity' type nostalgia