Posted on: Monday, May 23, 2005

ABOUT MEN

By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer

There's a new gag in male-targeted TV commercials that on the surface looks like a refreshing break from the sexist-piggy nonsense to which we're so blandly accustomed.

The setup goes something like this: Couple of average-looking guys are hanging out, havin' fun when something — or someone — off screen arouses their, um, attention. Their eyes widen. They drool like dogs. The elbow each other in the universal guy language of hubba-hubba.

Swedish twins? Cat-fighting WWE mamas? Penelope Cruz one-timing a bottle of Coke?

Nope, nope and nope. More like a plate of baby-backs, a plasma TV or a pair of real and sensational plastic bottles of beer.

There have been all sorts of variations over the last year or so, but the essence can be seen in the latest TGI Friday's ad, wherein our group of average guys spots a trio of hot babes walking through the door, sexy and slow-mo, to the strained strains of the Scorpions' "Rock You Like a Hurricane."

But then the music starts over and the camera shifts — to the chagrin of our hot babes — to a waiter bearing a platter of sizzling steaks.

Gorgeous women or dead cow? Dead cow is the winnah!

Ironic? Mildly subversive?

The initial impression, mine at least, is this can be read as a sort of progress, a raspberry to decades of ads that have used sex to sell us everything from crappy light beer to crappy cell phones.

By making light of the cynical use of scantily-clad women with come-hither looks to move product, these ads seem to liberate both men and women from a demeaning but popular script.

It might also be seen as an odd sort of reactive male empowerment. Men are not boors with one-track minds who can be manipulated by images of women as objectified sex toys. We have other interests and priorities like food and sports and ... well, food and sports.

These ads, then, would be the collective American male telling the hot babes of the TV screen that they aren't the boss of our glands — or our wallets.

And what a load of guano that is.

What these ads really do is objectify women to an even more demeaning degree: They're sexual lures that compete with and lose to whatever mass-produced garbage the advertisers are trying to shill.

They do no better service to male consumers who continue to be defined by their unthinking desire for sensory satisfaction. Craving a super-taco is surrogate to sexual desire. Securing a $7 six-pack of beer is made akin to desperate romantic pursuit.

Which is not to say that they're wholly off-base. While I'd like to think that we men are capable of emotional sensitivity, intellectual curiosity and other human capacities, I'm not immune to Teri Hatcher selling me a phone plan. And certainly there have been days when I would have knocked over Isabella Rossellini to get at a plate of ribs.

Isabella Rossellini and a plate of ribs? Hubba hubba.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2461.