Pro-Dad Group Attacks Verizon Ad Agency
A group called the Society for the Prevention of Misandry (hatred of men) in the Media has launched a campaign against New York advertising agency McGarry Bowen, creator of the Verizon "Homework" ad that shows a bumbling Dad attempting to help his daughter use the computer. We offered some commentary on this campaign earlier. While hatred of men surely isn't the intent of the Verizon spot, the Society's website provides information on how those who feel men get a bum wrap in advertising can contact McGarry Bowen, their clients and the press.
Founded in 2003, the Society was created "in response to the increasing prevalence of negative representations of fathers, husband's and men in mass media." The group hopes to use McGarry Bowen clients as leverage towards their cause and has provided contact info for the agency's clients: Crayola, Marriott, Pfizer, InBev, JPMorgan and Reebok.
While we do think there's no need to portray men as blithering idiots as is the case in the "Homework" commercial, it would, at the same time, be a bit hypocritical to complain after the many years woman have been relegated to subservient roles and sexual objects of desire. So guys, before you get all bent out of shape about this, call it fair trade. Do you really want to stop seeing women portrayed as sexual objects in advertising, magazine spreads and your favorite porn sites?
Comments
I think men have every right to complain about how they are portrayed. The media makes no attempt to hide it's message of contempt towards men. It's quite different from being portrayed as a sex object. The way women are portrayed doesn't openly promote hatred of them, their portrayal exploits what everyone wants, sex.
Take for example the progressive insurance commercial where the girlfriend tortures the boyfriend with a voodoo doll. At the end of the commercial they imply that she castrates him with wire cutters. Sorry, that's fucked up, you could NEVER direct such openly hateful attitudes towards women as a means of selling a product and get away with it. And there are more commercials than I can count like this one that openly express contempt for men.
I would not be offended at all if they also made men sex objects for the viewing pleasure of women. I don't see anything wrong with that, it's relatively harmless. I do see something very wrong, however, with ads that are denigrating and hateful. And it's usually men that are the objects of denigration in those ads.
Women's portrayal as"sex objects" - very well paid sex objects I might say - is not analgous to portraying men as imbeciles. It is interesting and revealing that you believe there is a real parallel!
At no time in any commercial I have ever seen was a woman ever portrayed as being obviously stupid - yet you glibly express satisfaction at men being so portrayed. You are advocating that two wrongs make a right and seem to glory in the negative image portrayed in the Verison ad.
If it is right now to portray men in demeaning ways then this new morality puts the lie to all previous whinnings of deep hurt professed by militant feminists and their toadies to what they percieved as expressing similarly negative images of women!
It is also possible that these feminists are hypocrites as well as misandronists - hate mongerers against men and hypocrites to boot.