I wondering if anyone else has noticed commercials of
late, of men celebrating being men. Burger king and some
shampoo or body wash have both gone to a
“man’s gotta be a man type” of commercial.
I don’t quite understand this. Is this some
sort of backlash against men being “feminized” or does
it say something else. Both products are national products, so
I am assuming both are broadcast nationally but I’m not sure.
So does it say something?
Kropotkin
I don’t know about the specific commericals you’re talking about, but, generally, the ‘man as man’ angle is comedic: Tim Allen, The Man Show - it’s more a joke than anything. At least that’s how I’ve always seen it.
I see it (as far as commercials go) as a subconscious fear tactic of sorts. Plant the seed that the insecure man might be a little too… non man for the public eye he must live up to.
As a sidenote my msn is set up so that when i get messages I hear Tim Allen’s ‘arrruuh’.
As another sidenote… Daybreak’s post count is 420.
Peter, you are old enough to remember the Marlboro man, the old Right Guard commercials, the Aqua Velva man (with the bitches and ho’s draped all over him). Manwich. Hungry Man Frozen Dinners. What was “the Manhandler”? I’ve forgotten.
It’s just the herd mentality at work. Nothing new.
Believe me, I noticed. 
Too bad it can only last but a moment.
Yeah, but you get be stoned your whole life. I think I have proven that.
PK
I haven’t seen the two that you’ve mentioned but I know the sort of adverts…
Put simply, it’s a development of the initial ‘man ideal’ that was sold when corporations first started selling cosmetics to men back in the 80s. That man was basically a variation on the female of the same type - relatively slender, effeminate, cares a lot about shoes and hair and jewellery. It isn’t so much a backlash against this as a development from it. In women’s cosmetic advertising there are about 12 distinct ‘types’ that are being sold, a dozen different ‘woman ideals’ which enables advertisers to reach a wider number of people and convince them that they have some particular insecurity that will be allayed by whatever product it is that they are selling. Because the effeminised man of the 80s and 90s was only appealing to men who, for whatever reason, were somewhat inclinced down that route anyway the advertisers were missing out huge numbers of men. So they’ve decided to branch out a bit, come up with a slightly new and different ‘man ideal’ for the consumers to aspire to be.
Now, because all TV culture is made, predominantly, for women (because historically and now women have spent more time in the home and most TVs are in homes), men are conceived of in a much more simple way. If one looks at the construction of characters in soap operas, the women have much more complex emotional journeys and motivations and psychology and all the rest of it. This is inaccurate, of course. Men differ and range as much and as far as women, individually and collectively. But not according to TV culture. Hence this rather simplistic process of ‘we need an alternative to the effeminised man’ has resulted in ‘err, err, I know, let’s re-sell them the macho macho man’. Of course, people are thick, regardless of gender, age, life experience and so on. So they buy into it and buy into the product.
So it isn’t a backlash, as such, more a rather thick-headed variation on the existing way of selling cosmetics to men. And of course, once a type is established and received in one line of products, the same type will be adopted by others (in this case Burger King).
Of course, pseudofeminists conceive of ALL affirmations of maleness that don’t conform to their sanitised and effeminised ideal as a ‘anti-feminist backlash’. But these are the same people who conceive of all portrayals of women as somehow being in the wrong as being misogynistic. They are also morons, don’t be tempted to think like them.
The explanation that I’ve offered is one that has come from a short lifetimes of watching this stuff and absorbing huge amounts of it. I could be wrong, you’d be better off asking Gamer since he actually works in the industry.