marketing of masculinity

http://foodfacts.info/blog/uploaded_images/hardees-thickburger-shrinka.jpg

so is the Thickburger more "masculine" than the burgers at those fast food places that are tiny and kinda grayish?

you clearly do not understand the masculine cult of the grill

you know, because you're a woman

A definition of masculinity that is not anchored to gender would define various qualities or tendencies as masculine or feminine. The fact that most people display, at various times, all of the qualities assigned to masculinity or femininity would not be a problem, because this is accepted as given.

Otherwise, you are stuck with a definition that refers exclusively to genitalia. I have a penis and testicles, therefore I am masculine. But conflating masculinity with sexual equipment or sexual orientation renders the entire concept superfluous.

xp - that's what i'm getting at - like those whitecastle miniburgers that aren't actually grilled and are kinda gray and gross - how do they reconcile with masculine coding?

does it imply that the "men" gay men desire - what constitutes that masculinity - is narrower than that which straight women desire?

― sarahel, Monday, June 21, 2010 8:47 PM (4 minutes ago)

i guess its just that in that equation, women dont hold the same kind of stake in representations of masculinity, or at least don't experience it and the expectations of it in the same way. For gay men to demand an abstract and caricatured version of masculinity, and to hold it up as being somehow more authentic (that is, these guys are only gay in there sexual orientation and in every other way are just like other bros y'know) feels like particularly insidious appropriation and enforcement of the gender archetypes forced on them orig.

they are marketed to men as vegetables xpost

also - corndogs - is there a relation between the popularity of corndogs with hipsters and the way they "perform" masculinity?

xp @ aimless, if we're gonna drop the link w/ gender what is the point of masculine/feminine at all? why organise these particular set of traits around this (now disappeared) binary at all. And won't that binary kind of remain anyway, like I don't see how we could just drop something with such an accumulation of cultural baggage.

^^ exactly.

x-post so much of this stuff is about what "guys don't" do! or like, what's "less." it's passive-aggressive flattery with a keen awareness that what a man's doing when he sees ur ad is sitting on his ass watching tv or stuck in freeway traffic and needs to feel validated and inferior at the same time. many xposts

yeah, i mean advertisers obv have a vested interest in sustaining the neuroticism around men's idea of their own masculinity as a way to sell shit. But I think its pretty harmful. A point was made to me pretty recently that ANY attribution of femininity to a man could only really be phrased as an insult. I kinda feel like everyone should have the right to be a fag, straight or gay, and these are pretty fucking sexist.

advertisers obv have a vested interest in sustaining the neuroticism around men's idea of their own masculinity as a way to sell shit. But I think its pretty harmful.

Welcome to our lives! The cushions are hideous because someone bought them from Cindy Crawford's Walmart collection, but at least the couch is big enough for all of us.

xpost

The ads, btw, are clearly a variation on the usual theme, where buying the product solves the Big Problem, although the Problem is not the usual "I want more sexing", but rather "I feel unworthy of sexing".

i think these are equally common problems consumer goods are marketed to solve

i dunno if you could in this day and age be as blatant as the "put down your purse bit" and i swear i am in no way trying to downplay the societal pressures faced by women

xxxp to myself because it took me this long to respond and I hate to throw out a perfectly good comment:

Remember, when the front door shuts behind you, just close your eyes and wait for the Lysol/Clorox/Febreeze color-safe full-body disinfectant spray deodorant treatment to complete and the green light to come on before germ-lock door will open. We're doing it for the children.

well, i can't think of any ad campaigns targeted at women that operate on fear of being perceived as a lesbian.

No, that's true. But we are supposed to be afraid of being too much or not enough of every other possible personal quality lest it be antithetical to femininity. Our sexuality isn't in question so much because, well, does anyone care what women like in their sex? As long as WE are likeable to others and we can still badger our husbands about household chores, everything will be fine.

I truly don't want to derail, I'm just saying I think there's a reason there's not more widespread accusation of homosexuality leveled against women by advertisers -- they don't have to pull that lever because there are already 895,680,890 others. They don't even have to go that far.

I can bring home the bacon
Fry it up in a pan
And never ever let you
Forget that you're a man
ohhhhhhhh, Enjoli

my friend & i have had running jokes about that hardee's ad for a whole year now

Laurel - don't forget about the children!

"hey what's up y'all i baked something"
"YOU MADE FOOD BY HAND??? WHAT ARE YOU, SOME KIND OF FAGGOT? TAKE YOUR QUEER BISCUITS AND GET OUT OF MY MANCAVE, HOMO."

https://edgecastcdn.net/800034/www.perpetualkid.com/productimages/lg2/TOWL-0402.jpg

seriously, you could edit out the line about the biscuits and replace it with the guy saying, "Hey guys, guess what, I'm gay!"

That towel says "Baking is GAY!" in case you couldn't read it.

Laurel - that's funny, because at the Tassajara bakery, at least back in the 60s, they would actually only let men bake the bread, women could only do prep and cleaning and stuff.

"hey i made food"
"WTF. SIT DOWN AND WATCH MEN IN JUMPSUITS REV THEIR ENGINES."

The stupid conflation of gayness with femininity. Shit, from the pov of butch dykes, riding Harleys is GAY.

Can I -- do I even have to say that the word "mancave" makes every skin cell I have cringe in repulsion? There are whole shows dedicated to...them. I'm not saying it again. It's a terrible word. Also, really, just crawl back into a vagina and find a womb if you really need it to be warm and dark and infantilizing that badly.

^^exerting your own expectations of masculinity

plax: I kinda feel like everyone should have the right to be a fag, straight or gay

never felt in the right position to assert this myself, idk if I'd be co-opting or how it'd seem from outside, but I think this is space worth fighting for anyway.

Fear of gayness is apparently the only available effective tool to motivate men to get off the couch and buy something.

The stupid conflation of gayness with femininity.

yeah the underlying assumption behind "men don't bake" isn't "gay men bake" it's "women bake"

But also that being like a woman = gay, no?

yeah I guess the reaction of the other guys isn't like "oh shit... this dude might be a woman!!"

Is it an overreaction to think shit like this feeds shit like this?

This quote horribly lol:

"That was the pathetic reason as to why this terrible event happened - because he wanted to show he wasn't a pussy"
David Jeremy QC, prosecuting

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/10372678.stm

i guess it 'feeds into it' but you might as well posit other pop-cultural causes while yer at it. video games. rap music. action movies.

red bull imo

Can I -- do I even have to say that the word "mancave" makes every skin cell I have cringe in repulsion? There are whole shows dedicated to...them. I'm not saying it again. It's a terrible word. Also, really, just crawl back into a vagina and find a womb if you really need it to be warm and dark and infantilizing that badly.

This is OTMFM. My wife and I just bought a house, and there are several more rooms than we previously had in the place we were renting. I cannot tell you how many times people were like "Oooh. Now you can have a MAN CAVE."

Fuck that. If I want to watch a football game or play video games or watch a war movie, I'll do it. If my wife is currently utilizing the television, I'll either go somewhere I can watch the game or wait until she isn't. I don't need some sanctum infantatum to go do my "manly" things. At least back in the day the den was a place of work or quiet contemplation or reading or some such shit. Its replacement - the man cave - is a place of 50" plasma televisions, team logo stickers, and keggerators. Shit, dude. Leave that at a bar.

Its just so lame. I get that some dudes need to have a place where they can get away from the world and just kick it, watch a game, sit in recliners, drink beer, or whatever.

BUT WOMEN DON'T WANT THAT, TOO? FUCK!

Caveat: I do have an "office" because I work a fair bit at home, and am distracted relatively easily. This will not become a man cave, however.

How about an interact-with-your-family-like-they're-real-people cave?

(there are no caves or private areas, except the bathroom and my kid's bedroom)

At least back in the day the den was a place of work or quiet contemplation or reading or some such shit. Its replacement - the man cave - is a place of 50" plasma televisions, team logo stickers, and keggerators.

Haha. I went off the handle a little bit yest but I should maybe be more thoughtful and say, yeah, agreed w BLAM on this point: of course EVERYONE would like space for themselves, comfort, etc, but I have to main objections to the mancave:

1. It pre-assumes that the rest of the house is NOT his, meaning it must belong to his wife and he's somehow less welcome or less "in control" there, which is obvious gendered bullshit and demeaning to all parties.

2. Men are being sold the lowest common denominator of hopes and dreams for this little bit of space that is "theirs". And they're supposed to be MOST at home and most their "real" authentic selves there, somehow? Except the whole sports and beer and bravado and sloppiness thing, while I myself am a big supporter of all these in the right context, these are not qualities that exercise the "best self" even though they have their place in life. This is not what we need more of in the home, or in our heads really.

*TWO main objections. Fingers too fast there.

How about an interact-with-your-family-like-they're-real-people cave?

Nah. Fuck them.

how many people actually have these man caves? outside of beer commercials and sitcoms and mtv cribz.

Also related to expounding on point #2: I loathe the fact that advertisers have successfully made this kind of personal space in the home be about CONSUMPTION more than contemplation, or anything else the space could be used for. Maybe that's snobbish/elitist of me.

iatee, I have no idea, but people on home shows who're shopping for a new place or w/e seem to talk about them A LOT.

I agree that it's a concept of sorts and surely does exist in reality for some people - but to say that it's replaced the den? I dunno, I'd bet there are 5x as many 'dens' as 'man caves' in america...bet based entirely off personal experience.

New idea: Is the "man cave" a replacement idea for the garage or workshop, for "modern" men who don't have garages or wood-working areas or tools and hobbies of that particular "manly" sort? Like, a lot of people can come to the rescue with a cordless drill or some basic plumbing stuff like getting things out of the drain trap etc, in an emergency, but most of us "urban"(?) younger people don't spend the number of hours working on machinery or carpentry projects, etc, that I remember people doing when I was little. Or yardwork, because we don't have yards per se or we hire landscapers or something.