Since dudes apparently scoff at diet drinks, the folks behind the new Dr. Pepper Ten soda decided they needed to really butch up their advertising in order to reach the core soda-drinking demographic, which just happens to be teenage boys. The result? An over-the-top, ironically hypermasculine ad campaign touting the new drink as “NOT FOR WOMEN.”
Here’s one of the ads:
Oh, and they’ve also got a Facebook app that’s — get this! — only available to men! I’m not sure the women of the world are going to suffer much from being banned from playing a rudimentary flash game that involves shooting “girly things.”
I know they’re hoping to generate controversy here, but really? This is just too dumb to even get annoyed about, much less angry. It’s not misogynistic; it’s more a parody of misogyny. Is it such a parody – stereotyping guys as macho buffoons — that it’s actually more misandrist than misogynist? You could make an argument for that, but again the ad is so over the top ridiculous, so soaked in irony, it seems silly to get indignant about this either.
So what’s going to happen when the MRAs of the world hear about this ad? Will they, missing the irony, embrace its Diet Soda Going Its Own Way (DSGIOW) mentality? Or will they denounce it as an example of ad world misandry and pretend to be deeply offended?
I’m betting on the latter. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Oh yeah… P.P.P.S. What do you have against the large majority of men who can’t afford to support a full-time housewife, and badly need the second income, and would prefer that second income be the one an educated and capable person can make? Even with women removed from the economy–which has never actually been the case, not in the 1950s and not in the 1800s–that would still throw a whole lot of men into poverty.
“Of course, removing female domination from the consumer economy will involve far more than just diet soda advertising (which, given the nature of most artificial sweeteners, is probably almost as poisonous to consumers as are the processed sugar or high-fructose corn syrup (can anybody spell “aspertame?”) being substituted anyhow!”
Yes, and the actual spelling is “aspartame”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame
Also, yeah – closet full of heels over here. I’m like Imelda Marcos without the whole dictatorship thing. OMG, I’m pettable (well, huggable) AND I wear heels! And lipstick too! I’m the perfect woman! And yet I still want nothing to do with our resident grouchy grandpa.
dare I say it,
soda is bad for your health, if a teenage boy drinks to much, just like the name of this site, he could develop man boobs…..
and the diet stuff is even worse–I didn’t do any research, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it causes prostate cancer in men, ovarian cancer in women and brain cancer in everyone….
If you must drink soda, the best is mexican coca cola where they use cane sugar instead of high fruitcose corn syrup…..
and how come unhealthy food is often advertised as manly? That is just misandrist and wrong….
So I guess DKM has chosen “dumb MRA reaction to this ad #1” then.
Holly, supporting your theory: when I played the “shoot girly stuff” game on Facebook, I did so poorly it told me I shot like a lady.
In case anyone was wondering, the girly stuff to be shot consisted of rainbows, unicorns, flowers and lipstick.
Eh, soda with real sugar is less bad, but it’s still pretty bad. Phosphorus is bad for your bones regardless of what you sweeten the drink with.
stoner, sierra mist also uses cane sugar.
But hey, what’s wrong with drinking juice? Nice and sugary, but it has some actual nutritional value too.
What’s even worse is that there are women using shaming language on other women to tell them that they shouldn’t be offended:
“Jennifer Lubert
<<<< Would like to know when and where the next bra burning is scheduled?"
Haha, "bra burning." Seriously, that whole stereotype is so overblown.
"Jennifer Lubert
I AM KIDDING!!!! Really ladies, its a damn commercial!!!! Over sensitive chickys all PMS'ing this week????"
Thank you for perpetuating the "PMS" schtick, Jennifer. I love it when people accuse me of "PMSing" just because I get angry or annoyed at something. Men, on the other hand, point at Yoplait commercials being "misandric" and don't get made fun of for, uh, some sort of biological function. Where's the equality there?
"Nelly Sanchez-Juarez
Jennifer Lubert, they haven't changed their tampons, yet… try next week."
What the fuck, Nelly? I don't even use tampons. Menstrual cups FTW. But really, what does changing tampons have to do with accepting annoying marketing?
I'm convinced that women like this are just trying to "be one of the boys." They feel the need to denigrate their own gender to appeal to sexist men. That pisses me off more than the Dr. Pepper commercial. Okay, the commercial, while stupid, isn't enough to make me go into RAAAAAAGE™ mode, but I do find it stupid that they're attempting to push away half of the potential market instead of being gender-neutral and getting more people to buy their sugary beverages.
tl;dr: I'll stick to tea, thank you.
MRAL? Is that you?
@ Arielle – So you haven’t met magdaleyn, then?
I think every blog or forum is required to have at least one of those “I’m cool, not like the other girls!” women. It’s in the Internet charter or something.
Can you, Meller?
I think his biggest regret was not being of age in the 50’s.
Most of these already are, doofus. Do you not have a TV?
David,
I like juice-especially orange juice….
unfortunately it is pricey ounce for ounce……
I like trader joes but they are expensive…..
It is expensive to eat healthy–I have tried….
Also, one healthy thing I did was avoid foods that had monogycerol/dycarbnohdrate–weird chemical names on the packages….
Ironically, I ate my healthiest when I was unemployed as I had free time and a stockpile of cash–kind of a luxury…….
now the temptation for california burritos and pizza is hard to resist….
Thanks for sharing, stoner. Sounds like you picked your name carefully. But maybe you’d enjoy your buzz more if you put on “Planet Earth” and ate burrito pizza than if you told the Internet about it.
By the way, I call Poe on DKM. As jaded as I am, I find him so over the top, he has got to be joking.
the bestest way to enjoy the buzz is with baked goods cuz then it’s like shrooms but I shouldn’t talk about that cuz that’d be a derail…..
If he is, he’s joking everywhere else on the internet.
You can’t cherish something or someone that you consider inferior or, to use Aristotle’s language, “misbegotten”. As much as you may pine for your own personal servant-slash-fucktoy, you should stop for a minute and consider how “real womanhood” can be “real” if it requires such intense socialization and the legal system to enforce it, and why so few women want to live a life of “real womanhood” as you define it. Stop being so self-centered and make at least an attempt at understanding. Short of that, remember that if you refuse to address and problem, you have no cause to complaint when other people solve it for you.
Something I don’t quite understand: How exactly is a unicorn “girly”? It’s a horse with a spike growing out of its face.
Dracula – A horse with cloven hooves and a beard and a spike growing out of its face and a terrible lust for virgins.
Then again, I hate to declare something ungirly just because it’s too awesome. That’s every kind of unfair.
The resources to employ MEN would still exist, of course, if businesses marketing mostly to men arose and prospered. The two-income household arose in the ’70s, and greatly accelerated in the ’80s and ’90s of the previous century because the “bumper crop” of women invaded the labor markets once they graduated from college in the mid to late ’70s, driving wages in general down.
What happens when you have an increase in supply (labor) and steady, if not decreasing demand? Price: i.e. wages or salary, goes DOWN for everyone. Additionally, it becomes more expensive for employers to hire or promote women because of legal liabilities, “hostile workplace” and “sex harassment’ lawsuits and regulations, court-ordered “quota” hiring of female applicants, etc. This nonsense also drives down everybody’s wages (NOT corporate profits) as the money to accomodate the rush of mandated new employees must come from somewhere, and it is naturally enough subsumed under the costs of doing business–like any other meddlesome regulations–and not gross quarterly income or even executive compensation. Women abandoning the home to earn a second income also increased household expenses as work done in and around the home by women had to be substituted, and the costs of substitution often exceeded the “income” Ms. Having-it-all earned as an office manager, attorney, or real estate ‘salesperson’. On the State and local level, taxes to accomodate the needs of children orphaned by women working outside the home, “daycare, school breakfasts, school lunches, evening hours for playgrounds and childrens’ centers, etc. further eroded male breadwinner wages. Now this has gone so far that, with the bursting of the mortgage real-estate bubble, outsourcing of manufacturing and technical jobs (manned by, in their time, by guess who?) now even two incomes are inadaquate for most working people, and we are entering a new great depression.
Is the new Great Depression the fault of feminists? No! The underlying causes were long-standing monetary and international trade abuses by the likes of the Federal Reserve, Bank of England and the, Bank of International Settlements, World Trade Organization, Bilderburg group, the International Monetary Fund… and the rest of the criminal elites in our society. But feminism–and its mania for getting overeducated women to work outside the home–made a bad situation much worse for everyone!
With the return of women en masse to home and family–as happened on a smaller scale after WWII–most families will again be able to easily afford single breadwinner households, especially when we have real money that retains, if not increases utility–purchasing power–over time, as opposed to fiat “US Dollars” that has seen 97% of its purchasing power erode since 1913, and the criminal oligarchy in charge of the Federal Reserve etc are on street corners with little tin cups where they belong!
PEACE AND FREEDOM!!
David K. Meller
@Holly
I love this video. (Standard disclaimer of harsh language, etc., etc.)
Oooooooh, Meller, so much wrong, so little time.
It’s on record, everyone. There is at least one thing David K. Meller will not blame on feminists.
@Holly: Agreed on the unfairness, I just don’t see why unicorns should automatically qualify as “unmanly” to these people. I guess I don’t agree with the logic that the presence of femininity implies the absence of masculinity, however one defines those terms.
Here’s a fun bit of doublethink!
-Women in the labor market is bad, because there’s too much competition; the labor market is better for workers when there are fewer workers
-Women need to go home and make babies so that future generations will have more workers
I don’t think things like this are harmless–no matter how goofy you’re being, saying “Girls like lame stuff! Guys like awesome stuff!” puts everyone in an obnoxious position. I mean, what do you say to that, particularly if the stuff they’re promoting as “awesome” is actually pretty lame itself?