Uh oh—here is the latest reason to be offended by normative gender divisions. The California Milk Processor Board has a new advertising campaign that focuses on the milk’s ability to alleviate PMS symptoms because of its vitamin D and calcium levels. The campaign’s approach to promoting this health benefit, however, is a sexist display of men with gallons of milk, cowering in fear of PMS-ing women counterparts.
“Don’t you just love when men tell you how to laugh at yourselves and your wild mood swings, ladies? A healthy, balanced diet is a thing of beauty. But with its ugly new campaign, the milk board just might find a whole lot of rampaging female consumers suddenly feeling mighty lactose intolerant.”
4 responses
Stupid gags about PMS are so offensive and wrong! The ad companies should just stick to portraying men as messy, forgetful fools incapable of feeding ourselves or putting on clothes in the morning. That’s the real comedic gold, it’s funny because it’s true, right?
Never mind the fact that lactose-free milk is just like regular milk only with the sugar broken down ahead of time, but… Sorry, did I get annoyed by the “wrong” thing?
If we’re offended by something as innocuous as an advertisement for milk, then I assume the aspects of “normative gender divisions” that actually affect people’s lives must have all been solved. And if that’s the case, we should all be celebrating instead of watching milk commercials.
Samuel, I think you’re misssing the point. This does affect people’s lives. Advertising is comfortable telling every man — my husband, my brother, my father, my son — that I’m crazy. That I can’t control myself. That I literally turn into a monster one week out of every four. That I need to be handled with “strategies.”
In case you missed it: it dehumanizes me. And if something “as innocuous as an advertisement for milk” is allowed to dehumanize me, if no one raises a hand to say, “excuse me, this I find offensive,” then no, the aspects that affect people’s live HAVEN’T been solved.
And Nate, the same people who get offended by this schtick are offended by that one. One is no better than the other.
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