Brut Ad
For my first blog topic I have chosen a printed advertisement from The Sporting News magazine week of January 11, 2011 issue. In this advertisement, a young white male is photographed close up straight in line with the camera. His face is covered with a green exfoliating facial mask and there are ten small cucumber slices placed strategically on his forehead, eyes, nose, cheeks and chin. There is quite a bit of beard stubble on his chin giving the appearance that he has not shaved in a few days. As for the large text which is in all capitals that reads, “SOME MEN JUST NEED TO BE SLAPPED,” this is an extremely harsh and violent sexist statement. This bold statement is making the assumption that men are not masculine if they get facial treatments such as the one depicted in this ad. It is also making the assumption that if a man does things that are considered feminine, he is truly no longer a man that makes him inferior or like a woman. I believe the beard stubble is a way of showing that he is still trying to be masculine, but needs help in finding a way. This ad is suggesting that the reader, who is typically a male, will see this photograph and decide that purchasing BRUT products is the way to smell like a man and therefore be truly masculine.
The small text implies that choosing to go curtain shopping (a.k.a. a woman’s thing to do) over playing basketball (a.k.a. a man’s thing to do) means that the reader needs to get his masculinity in check. The ad also suggests that badminton is a “girl” sport and that real men do not play badminton, another sexist statement. This ad is degrading to women because it makes the assumption that being feminine is disempowering. It goes along with the beliefs of living in a patriarchal society such as ours with the men dominating socially, economically and culturally. This ad suggests that being a man means acting like a man. It suggests that men do not need to go to the lengths that women do to be attractive. All a man needs to do is wash his face and splash on some after-shave and he is good to go out in public. Or he can choose to do nothing at all and that is totally acceptable. The woman, on the other hand, is constantly concerned with her looks and feels that to be accepted in the world she must wear make up, have flawless skin, be thin, and be pretty all the time. Spa treatments are generally done on women because women are the surveyed sex and they feel they need to care about how they look and how men feel about them. Women are more concerned about aging skin than men in our society. This BRUT ad is very sexist in nature and made to make men feel superior. At the same time, it can also be disempowering to homosexual males as they would probably see nothing unnatural about getting a facial, going curtain shopping or playing badminton. Our society has stereotyped men as being tough and these actions do not fit into masculine stereotyped categories.
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