Television Ads Reflect False Image

Harrisburg Patriot-News
Suzanne Cassidy
(Copyright 2002)

The Eagles aren't playing today, so I have no emotional investment in the outcome of Super Bowl XXXVI.

I had thought I'd still tune in, just to catch the commercials. Now, however, I'm reconsidering. With the marketing marathon that is the Super Bowl telecast looming before me, I spent several evenings last week watching commercials, instead of channel-surfing past them. I did this because I was curious about what we looked like, and what our culture looked like, as presented by Madison Avenue.

This exercise probably cost me thousands of brain cells, but it was a revelation.

This is what I gleaned from the commercials I saw: Women apparently are so obsessed with shampoo that we derive sexual satisfaction from it. We're obsessed not just with shampoo, but also with keeping our skin moist and unwrinkled. And this might be 2002, but women still, apparently, are most fulfilled by doing housework.

New cleaning utensils thrill us so much that we practically dance when we're using them. We not only love to clean, but we also express our love by cleaning -- we employ whole arsenals of antibacterial products to make our homes safe for our loved ones. (We're on a mission, it appears, and mere soap and water won't suffice.)

Housework apparently gives us purpose, it defines us, it makes us special. "Mama's got the magic of Clorox," goes the jingle of one particularly annoying laundry commercial.

We're also obsessed with dieting. Dieting is, apparently, our ticket to happiness, which is strange because, according to what I saw on television, we have to go to heaven before we're permitted even teeny portions of cheesecake.

We're free, however, to drink all of the artificially sweetened lemonade we want. We're so anxious to lose weight that we're elated by the prospect of eating soup day after day after day for lunch. We seek weight-loss programs that not only will help us to shed pounds but also to transform our miserable lives.

"Have you ever looked at your body and wanted to cry?" asks one bikini-clad woman, in a commercial for a diet supplement. Commercials for such products tend to feature women.

Men, on the other hand, are infrequently seen in weight-loss commercials, unless the weight-reduction program entails eating submarine sandwiches at a fast-food chain.

Indeed, eating daintily, while required for women, is apparently downright dangerous for men. In one commercial for Hungry-Man dinners (slogan: "It's good to be full"), a beefy bloke is literally blown away by a gust of wind after revealing that he's eaten a light supper.

You'd think we women would need more sustenance than men. You rarely see men - in commercials -- packing school lunches, doing laundry, or comforting an ailing child in the middle of the night.

I have no research data to support this, but it seems to me that men are shown more often slumped on the couch, eating junk food and watching sports on television, or in some similar state of laziness.

TV commercials seem to abound with galoots in the mold of Homer Simpson, who snarf down all of the cinnamon sticks just delivered by the pizza guy, or munch on cat treats, thinking they're snack crackers. In one Sears commercial, the husband is so clueless that he has to ask his wife where in the house the bath towels and microwave should go.

Inept and oblivious fathers also seem common in TV commercials.

There is the dad, of course, in the MasterCard commercial, who picks up his son late at night from a sleepover. But then there is the dad in the J.C. Penney commercial who cannot cope with his child for even a few hours, while his wife is out shopping, and the dad in the Florida orange juice commercial, who hides behind his newspaper as his frazzled wife deals single-handedly with their family's morning rush.

And then there are the numerous TV-commercial dads who seem to care much, much more about their cars and their television sets than about their kids.

An ad for Circuit City shows a young father in his new home, watching as his new
flat-screen television is installed. Only when the TV set is in place does he permit his wife and others to begin moving the rest of the family's belongings into the house. "Just put that anywhere," the man says to his wife, who stands behind him, holding their child.

A commercial for the Honda Accord LX shows a dad using his baby's diapered bottom to soak up drops of water that have fallen on his shiny new car. ("You can't explain it until you have one of your own," says the voice-over.)

And a commercial for the Honda Odyssey shows a couple driving their minivan around town at night, in an effort to lull their restless infant to sleep. When, finally, their child falls asleep, the father surreptitiously tugs on the baby's foot. The baby begins to cry, but the dad is happy, because as long as the baby stays awake, he can keep driving his beloved vehicle.

Jennifer Chang, assistant professor of marketing at Penn State University's Smeal College of Business Administration, says that men are often the objects of fun in commercials because they are seen as safe targets for humor. Men are a default category in society, she says, and it's regarded as acceptable to poke fun at a default category, which consists of those who are traditionally viewed as dominant and mainstream.

Chang cautions against interpreting TV commercials too literally. Some are intended to be ironic and humorous, she says.

And many commercials that use gender stereotypes are funny. But they also can be insidious in influencing how we see ourselves, and one another.

We can laugh at the Super Bowl commercials tonight. But we ought to see ourselves and others as we really are -- not as Madison Avenue caricatures us.

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Penn State's Smeal College of Business offers highly ranked undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, Ph.D., and executive education opportunities to more than 5,500 students at all levels. Featuring academic departments of accounting, finance, marketing, insurance and real estate, management, and supply chain and information systems, the college is also home to major research centers such as the Center for Supply Chain Research, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the eBusiness Research Center, the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Global Business Studies, and the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change.

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