Shows, made-for-TV movies, sports, magazine shows, talk shows, and even network news shows (NBC Nightly News is probably the best---or is it worst?--- example) are all slanting heavily toward women. The reason is simple economics: commercial television gets its money from selling advertising. Since women spend 80 cents of every consumer dollar, it pays for advertisers, and therefore television, to aim at women. As a result, we get shows like Men Behaving Badly.
What about television commercials today? I decided to do my own informal study. I make no claims to performing a complete, compulsive, and unbiased look at commercials -- I tried to be fair, but do admit to having a pro-male bias. I looked at ads from commercial television as well as commercials on cable stations and one Canadian station. I included regional and local (Seattle area) commercials as well, so you may not be familiar with all of them. I only looked at the scenarios presented -- I ignored the announcers.
Examples abound. AM/PM: woman treats boyfriend like a 5-year-old. Bud Light: man running alongside a train runs into a pole. Bud: truck driver dancing on model runway. Direct TV: plumbers watch TV instead of working. Dr. Scholl's: fisherman kills fish with smelly feet. Hertz: "not exactly." Lee: guy in coffee shop asks waitress out for coffee. McDonald's: teenage couple on date -- girls mature faster. Miller: Mr. Disco's zipper is down. Nutrageous: sleazy salesman. Snickers: endzone painter spells "Chefs." Suburu: bad guys chasing Paul Hogan. Tidycat: man remarks that date got rid of cat. Ads for movies (e.g., 9 Months, Dear God, First Kid, and Tin Cup) and television programs (e.g., Foxworthy, Funniest Home Videos, ink, Home Improvement, Men Behaving Badly, Townies, Wings) also portray men as jerks. I did find a few female jerks. For example--- 7-up: woman can't catch can thrown to her second story window. Oreo: little girl dunks whole hand in milk. Bounty: little hula dancer knocks over bowl. Nice and Easy: woman colors others' hair at wedding and on bus.
Portrayed as incompetent, slobs, jerks, rude, dumb, or destructive: men-118 or 94 percent, women-8, or 6 percent.
I also examined commercials that made fun of men or women. Of course, since presenting someone as a jerk also makes fun of them, all of the above commercials were automatically included in this category. Plus I found many more that make fun of men. (Admittedly, the distinction between these two categories is a bit fuzzy. After all, you could argue that making fun of men also presents them as jerks. But, hey, it's my study, I'll do it the way I want!)
Budweiser: ants use a magnifying glass to burn a hole in guy's hat and steal his beer. Got Milk?: any of them. Toyota: woman drives by stranded ex-boyfriend who wanted more space. Little Caesar's: disappointment in the honeymoon suite. Doritos: permanent surprise syndrome. (Are women more likely to have permanent surprise syndrome? Have you ever seen Paula Zahn read the news?) DiGiorno: "pizza boy." Dawn: man with dishwashing system. Mervyn's: class laughs at Joe Montana. Wisk: ice cream falls over balcony to land on man. Texaco: competitive Andretti and Ditka. Carpet One: blindfolded bald guy can tell color of carpet by rubbing it on his head. Kodak: bird divebombs boy's picture of his girlfriend. Discus: makes fun of man's groin in tight outfit. Chia: all 4 chia-heads appear to be male. I did find one commercial that makes fun of a woman but wasn't included in the jerk category: promo for Everybody Loves Raymond: Raymond makes fun of his wife for not marrying him until he got a job.
Makes fun of men-147; makes fun of women-9.
There's also the Petco commercial where a female cat makes fun of a male dog. And the Coldwell Banker commercial which shows obnoxious male animals and then nurturing mother animals with their babies. And the Southwest Airlines commercial showing one-track-mind dogs ("Bite the leg") and compares them to a guy looking for the lowest airfare ("Find the fare.") And Kodak's neutered dog ripping up the picture of his masters. And Texaco's dachshund morphing in the back seat. And HBO's chimps mouthing male movie actors. And even the toilet with bad breath in the Clorox commercial has a male voice. (Can you even imagine a commercial with a female toilet with bad breath?) The only exception to this trend is the Lay's commercial where Miss Piggy eats all the potato chips.
Goofy animals, cartoon characters, etc.: Male-31, Female-1.
Another trend I noticed was that nearly all health and medical product advertisers show women as the experts. Usually a woman advises another woman or a man, but rarely does a man advise another man and even rarer does he give advice to a woman.
Probably the most outrageous example of this is advertising for Rogaine. In the commercial for Rogaine for men, the man's wife (girlfriend?) tells him how to stop losing hair. But in the commercial for Rogaine for women, the woman's sister is the source of the advice. Men can't even be knowledgeable about baldness. Primatene Mist shows a wife helping her husband with a nighttime attack. Tagamet shows a wife helping her husband eat chicken marsala. Maalox shows a man enjoying a sandwich with a guy friend, but when he eats the same kind of sandwich and gets heartburn, his wife is there to help him. Mylanta shows a little girl warning her brother about eating spicy food. Tylenol, Advil, and other pain relievers seem to be the worst offenders of this trend. (Of six Advil commercials--- hatmaker, blacksmith, photographer, electricians, hairdresser, TV production--- three show a woman advising a man, one shows a man advising a man, and two show a woman advising a woman. None show a man advising a woman.) The only exceptions were two Unisom commercials where a son helped his mother get to sleep. However, in both Unisom commercials the son's wife was right there. In one, she even read the letter from Mom.
Women giving men health advice: 19; men giving women health advice: 2.
Just as in general, in the health area it is usually only men who are made fun of or embarrassed. Take diarrhea for instance. The omnipresent Imodium commercials show a guy slowing down his carpool or embarrassing himself on an airliner. Yet, a Koapectate commercial with a woman is very serious and sympathetic. Robitussin offers another good example. A woman at her daughter's recital starts coughing and is sympathetically offered a cough drop by a woman (of course.) Yet another Robitussin commercial shows a guy coughing in a movie theater where the actors on the screen demand that someone give him a cough drop. A woman (of course) disgustedly hands him one. Then he is humiliated for talking. Another example is the Phillips' commercial where a black woman embarrasses her constipated husband, Raymond. (She also embarrasses her daughter at a check-out line, but more about that later.) Also, it seems only men get athlete's foot or foot odor.
Related to this is that there really aren't any fat women in commercials, even though women are generally more concerned about their weight than men. Diet and exercise commercials may show a "before" picture of a woman, but no motion. You're more likely to see fat guys followed by slim female models actually on the exercise equipment or showing off their new bodies. Even breakfast cereals (Total, and the Kellogg's commercial where the guy has his father's body) show men in the fat mode. And how about the Old El Paso ads showing a fat man dancing around like a idiot. Can you even imagine a fat woman doing these commercials? Possible exceptions to this theme are two Jenny Craig commercials that show an overweight Cindy Williams (although she isn't that fat), and a Gas-X commercial using special effects to show a bloated woman on a cruise ship.
Men are also on the receiving end of any "humorous" violence.
It seems there is a constant stream of commercials laughing at men getting hit, kicked, boinked, threatened or even killed. Boston Market: salesman is attacked by tiger. M&Ms: "Love hurts." Lotto: man throws dart into biker. Target: skateboarder falls into pool of gravy. Little Caesar's: man hurts other men with a 3-foot-long pizza. The Good Guys: a 3-Stooges-style fight while checking competitor's prices. Movie trailers (e.g., 9 Months, She's the One, First Kid, Bulletproof, Home Alone, Striptease, Dear God, Jingle All the Way, and Space Jam) and television program ads (e.g., Home Improvement, Common Law, The Muppet Show, and Funniest Home Videos) also frequently laugh at men getting hurt. But the one in the poorest taste in my mind is the Pontiac commercial that makes fun of actual tightrope walkers who have died because their ropes were "too thin." Because these are men, nobody cares or even notices. Does this constant barrage of humorous violence against men in commercials contribute to real violence against men? Why doesn't this happen to women in commercials?
Humorous violence or pain; against men-34, against women-0.
There also seems to be a trend to show political gender issues in commercials -- all were aimed at women. Blatant examples include ads for Nike, Women's Sports Foundation, Levi's, Bank of America, Ortho, Avon, Time/Life books, as well as several public service announcements (e.g. NBC's PSA with Jennifer Aniston on rape.) More subtle examples are choosy mothers choose Jif, Robitussin's Dr. Mom, and OB (designed by a woman so it must be better.)
Gender issues: women-27, men-0
Frequently, there seems to be a qualitative difference between commercials that poke fun of men and women. The ones that make fun of women are generally much milder. and they often make fun of girls, not women. For example, while Phillip's can make fun of a constipated male adult (Raymond), in order to make fun of a female, Phillip's has to use a teenage girl (in the grocery check-out line). This is odd because adult women are much more likely to be constipated than either adult men or teenage girls. But, I suppose, since adult women are much more likely to purchase Phillip's Milk of Magnesia, making fun of adult women is not allowed.
Ensure gives us another example. In one commercial, Dad loses to his son in 3 basketball games in a row. Yet, a mother-daughter Ensure commercial with a similar scenario has the mother beating her daughter in a swimming race. Of course, in both commercials, women are the experts about Ensure. Tylenol gives another example. In one ad in which a father and son are fishing, the commercial ends with the son saying he got his smarts from Mom. Another commercial with a mother and daughter ends with the daughter saying that as she gets older, her mother gets smarter.
Bottom line here, it seems TV advertising is reluctant to make fun of women or show women in a bad light. At the same time, advertisers have no problem making fun of men or portraying them as jerks, dorks, and doofuses. And men don't seem to mind. (It is not just advertising. I have noticed for a long time, that Letterman and Leno rarely make fun of women. But when they do, the audience often groans with disapproval.) It's now even possible to make fun of the handicapped -- as long as it's a guy: Air Touch Cellular with the blind man driving a car and hitting batting practice.
I often hear women complain that men have such fragile egos. Which, by itself, probably proves the opposite. It is women who probably have the fragile egos. And television advertising would seem to support this conclusion. The female ego is so fragile, that advertisers better be careful about making fun of women. Yet, men are so secure that advertisers can lay into them with little risk. Even ads aimed at men are more likely to make fun of men than women (e.g. beer commercials).
I suspect that the best way to solve this esteem problem of women is for advertisers to force the issue by poking fun at women. I also suspect that advertisers won't do this until men complain (boycott?) and force them to. So write letters to companies with the worst ads, boycott their products, or at least threaten to boycott. Advertisers won't change as long as we keep letting them get away with this.
In the meantime, I fully expect to see the National Organization for Women, AAUW, Jean Kilbourne, or some advocate for women do their own study and conclude that TV commercials are a blatant example of bias against women.
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