I post this, not so much for its insight, but more as an illustration of the bias that whites tend to ignore while claiming to be of some progressive mindset. Beer & Porn & Guns & Manicures
How can marketers sell crap to the new, elusive modern male? And just who is he, exactly?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Editor's Note: Beginning today, a slightly shortened version of Mark Morford's column will run in the Datebook section of the print edition of The Chronicle, every Wednesday and Friday. The full version, with active links, will continue to appear on SFGate.com.
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Marketers are confused. Marketers are nonplussed. Marketers are looking at the male of the American species and saying, what the hell is wrong with you and who the hell are you and how the hell do we get you to buy more crap from us, and by the way can you please stop playing with your penis for five seconds?
It is, apparently, no longer clear-cut. Men are no longer neatly divided -- not that they ever really were -- into two types: a) the new breed of metrosexual, trim and healthy and urban-bred and yoga-ready, confident in his Prada boots and expensive face lotion and European car and able to cook a five-course gourmet meal and satisfy his women using 102 variations of expert Tantric oral sex all while not damaging his manicure or staining his new 450-threat-count Egyptian cotton Donna Karan sheets.
Nor is he necessarily b) The Great Beer-Swilling Slob, paunchy in his faded Dockers and overgrown eyebrows, unsightly as an overfed gopher in his XXL bathing suit and blissfully addicted to barbecued foods and pickup trucks and Maxim magazine and sports and beer and especially sports involving beer, all while remaining entirely unable to tell a clitoris from a lawn mower and utterly powerless to point, if given a map of the world, to any state that doesn't have a famous baseball stadium.
Those types are, apparently, no longer the two primary competing species of marketable male in the United States and the world, and dammit, marketers are pissed. And baffled. Hell, according to Leo Burnett Worldwide, the ad agency that pretty much invented macho by way of dredging up the cancer-riffic hunk o' impotent, yellow-toothed, diseased-lung love, the Marlboro Man, marketing mavens have little idea as to just who the hell the new male actually is.
And why not? Because, apparently, men don't know either. According to LBM's own survey, 60 percent of New World Men (the agency polled males across 13 countries) say they want to be professional patriarchs: fathers and executives and breadwinnin' dudes with giant Weber grills larger than their Honda Accords. The other 40 percent hover near the metrosexual arena, craving, presumably, independence and style and the general avoidance of marriage before age 40 because they still want to have sex and stay out past 11 p.m.
But here's the kickers: Only 17 percent of those surveyed enjoy regular manicures, whereas 70 percent would rather look good in a business suit than a bathing suit. And it's about a 50/50 split if men are given the choice between staying home and raising the kids in an upscale, affluent environment while the wife works, or go to work themselves and accept a lower standard of living while the wife slaves away teaching the rug rats not to eat the rust chips off the trailer's hubcaps.
All of which means . . . well, not a whole hell of a lot, really, except that men aren't exactly conforming to typical behaviors and stereotypes and maybe, just maybe, there's some sort of evolution going on, some progress, intermixing, some sort of slightly deeper shift, and it's all about goddamn time, too.
Here's a quote:
"As the world is drifting toward a more feminine perspective, many of the social constructs men have taken for granted are undergoing significant shifts or being outright dismantled," muttered Tom Bernardin, CEO of Leo Burnett Worldwide, barbecuing a large pig on a spit over an open fire pit while simultaneously tuning his Porsche Carrera S with his All-Clad ice tongs.
"It's a confusing time, not just for men, but for marketers as well as they try to target and depict men meaningfully," he continued, his bare chest glistening under the hot sun, pectorals flexing madly as he squeezed the iron exercise bar in numerous glorious reps while simultaneously smoking three Marlboro Reds and curling a small paperweight with his penis. Ahem.
Tom's lament is, largely, true. Flip through any of the toxic and rather numb men's mags and note how there seem to be exactly five items Madison Avenue can sell to men with any sort of confidence of message: watches, booze, cars, razors, and sports crap.
Any combination of the above is even better: Sports stars using razors. Famous actors posing in brand-name watches. Big NBA star piloting his Bimmer toward the Tag Heuer store while slamming a fifth of Grey Goose vodka while his porn-star girlfriend shaves his legs with a Gillette Mach3 Nitro Turbo while delivering professional-grade oral sex, careful not to accidentally downshift. Mmm, manly.
But as for the rest of the male universe, the funkier, more intriguing issues of sex and work and emotional depth, spirit and energy and love, hygiene and social concern and the environment, gender play and bisexuality and the best red wine to go with nipple clamps and the fact that more men are the cooks of the house while more women are the sippers of the martinis, well, marketers appear more like Christian Republicans at a Wiccan festival.
Which is to say, lost and angry and vaguely threatened, unable to decipher the symbols, baffled by the raw manly funk, blanker than George W. Bush staring at a Shakespeare folio.
But, well, who cares? Dismantling is good. Breaking down the tired and cliched male stereotypes is good. Because while many men (red state boy-men in particular) may be confused as to their exact role as the divine feminine continues to re-assert herself in the new millennium and pump the conscious male genome with the hot spark of yonic awareness, for most of us with a sense of wry hungry yearning, this cultural confusion means one thing and one thing only: fewer boundaries.
More self-definition. More fluidity of self, spirit, penile usage, haircut. Less susceptibility to pathetic right-wing fearmongering. And less pressure to be what our fathers were almost universally forced to be (married nine-to-five breadwinners in unfulfilling jobs just out of college, or else). Women, with the incessant barrage of hideous cliched marketing messages assaulting them like a torrent of glossy overpriced locusts, should be this lucky.
So, what's the answer? What will the new male look like? Will he be, say, a Republican vegetarian who loves fine handguns and organic chard and anarchist art? Will he be a polyamorous neoconservative Francophile who reads gay erotica and sips green tea? How about an aggressive world-hopping CEO who's also into exotic prose poetry and imports vibrators from Panama with hand-polished burl-wood handles? Is he the mad-genius dude who makes your soy mochas at the coffee shop, who has a brilliant idea for how to turn your iPod into a divining rod? Or is he the German-Hawaiian furniture designer who cuts his wife's hair and makes killer steaks and listens to Metallica at incredible volume while he does pilates?
I do not have a clear answer, just yet. Perhaps this is the best news of all. At this particular moment, the possibilities are like a New York whorehouse during the Republican National Convention. Which is to say, wide open, and pumping hard.
(Oh and btw, you want incredibly obvious proof of the divine feminine's re-emergence? That's easy. Just look at the current sociopolitical climate, the raging right-wing intolerance and sexual dread, the desperate clinging of the GOP to old, stagnant, misogynist roles. Notice the frantic machinations, the fear of nipples and dildos and gender fluctuations, the uptight homophobia of the Christian evangelical sects, the frantic refusal to let go of sexist, prehistoric '50s mentalities. This is the biggest sign of all. When the most morally rigid among us get scared, something divinely juicy is always afoot).
So then. This is the wish. May more men begin to defy the marketers and the sloganeers. May Budweiser and Ford and Red Bull and Marlboro and Nike and Gillette and Rolex find limited joy in hawking their typical formula swill to the dwindling and increasingly confused Maxim frat-boy blue-collar set, with decreasingly profitable results and an undeniably annoying sense of desperation.
All while the divine feminine winks and shimmies and slides deeper into the cultural consciousness, as cliches and stereotypes crumble for both genders and the old neoconservative guard flusters and whines and morally masturbates itself into oblivion and utter irrelevance. Wow. Now that would make a good marketing slogan.
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