marketing of masculinity

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

x post to mac in the context of many male-aimed ads (esp the top ad in question), the foil is not boyhood but primarily the "opposite" gender and its ill effects on manhood

matter fact, in sort of bro-type ads (dave and busters comes to mind immediately), boyhood and the casting off of adult responsibilities is celebrated!

I agree, max, and I think yr right that being aware of which side is being run down by comparisons to the other is crucial to be on the lookout for, but I think there are more charitable views of what "be a man" entails sometimes.

xp Things that celebrate being bros are NOT what the manly ad is about. Most definitely.

What is Dave & Buster's?

men vs drones is the only one of these I could even sort of get behind. I want to see the man as adult camp come up with some nostalgic call to arms on the lines of the ad up top. "hoodie by hoodie, xbox by xbox"...?

xpost to laurel, it is like a video games and wings and beer kind of place, like chuck e cheese for adults...i don't know a comparable analogue elsewhere in the country, but they exist in texas and advertise on a sort of "be a kid again yay!" tip to the 20-30 y/o dude set

Dave and Busters, Laurel. No kidding.

http://www.travelks.com/images/Listing/5840-Co-Ed_Games_media.jpg

Look at the things men are expected to do in the Kettel 1 ad: they are all things that are WORK for them, and that benefit others. Now, whether some of them are the best solution to the world's problems is debateable (why hello dere, Promise Keeprs), but those commands are not about having fun or being irresponsible. It's more like they're telling you, Your life is best when it's devoted to others. Go and see where your strength and skills can be put to use.

This, at it's best and not in a shitty ad way, is kind of amazing for everyone, plus I wouldn't be too bothered by the gender component of that. Mostly because anyone for whom a life of service was a desirable thing, is probably not too bothered about exactly who does what in reality.

With Dave & Busters and Ketel One, I think part of the idea is that "we validate your thoughts and feelings--wanting to be a kid, wanting to be a cad--that aren't being validated around you, whether by your boss, your wife, your kids, etc.--and by validating those feelings in a safe way (i.e., don't leave your family, don't screw around) we will complete you as a man. Come off to the Ketel One woods with us, and you will return complete and confident--not changed, but with your internal self more merged with your social self. We'll make you a complete man."

OK wait I think I misunderstood something: what is the original ad with all the words on it for?

man pants iirc

Is that a Levi's ad? Some of it looks like their web design.

xps to max & bison yeah i'll accept that's more than fair in view of the ads in question.

kerouac wore khakis; ginsberg wore corduroys

http://fashiontribes.typepad.com/main/images/allen_ginsberg.jpg
Ginsberg wore OshKosh B'Gosh.

I don't think the dockers ad is so much an advert for selfless heroism so much as identifying selfless heroism as a trait on a par with "not being a fag" in the modern definition of being a MAN.

lol xp

That Dockers ad is hilariously stupid. I associate wearing Dockers with being in high school so the whole "BE A MAN" thing is pretty much entirely undercut by the fact that I was a child intentionally buying conservative pants that I could wear wit combat boots and Cure t-shirts.

I wish Harry Stein's Esquire article from 1994 about the "post-sensitive man" (Clinton and Lyle Lovett as examples, leading the way for Obama and Cloon) was on-line somewhere. Instead, there's just coverage of it from the NY Times:

The May issue trumpets the ascendance of the Post-Sensitive Man, one who treats women with respect but no longer needs to feel guilty "for the crime of simply thinking and feeling as men always have," as the article's author, Harry Stein, puts it.

The Sensitive Man, who re-created himself in response to feminism -- condemning the macho spirit, proclaiming emotional openness and purging prurient thoughts -- was always something of a fraud, asserts Mr. Stein, who is 45 and married. What's more, everyone was still dissatisfied, anyway. He suggests optimistically that today, in the easy-going acceptance of the inner differences between men and women and an end to self-righteousness on all sides, lies the possibility of "genuine understanding between the sexes."