I am not sure how long this has been out, but I just ran into this Depend ad on television about five minutes ago and was really bothered by it. While not only emphasizing a strict gender binary and presenting played-out gender roles as laughable truths, it positions the realities of patriarchal oppression as not only acceptable, but comedic, and implies that women only find power to combat this as manipulating wives.
This entire ad drives me insane, but what particularly gets to me is how Depend depicts its claim that "men and women are different" through these responses to the same question: the man answers immediately and confidently, while the woman's response is prefaced with "oh dear" and "do I really need to answer that one?", as if stating her opinion is somehow scandalizing.
I guess worn-out stereotypes reemphasizing "traditional" gender roles is how the Depend brand thinks it should target its clientele? Unacceptable.
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I thought gender binary did rule the world.
These ads have been around for awhile, I think several months.
They are so infuriating I wish I could boycott. But I can't say I'm really in the market right now.
My mom uses Depends. There are, in fact, different kinds for different sexes, as well as more 'general' ones for both genders.
It's also pretty hard to boycott a product when it's the only brand on the market. There are generic/store brand adult diapers, but they don't work very well.
I never understood this commercial.
I can't watch the video right now, and I am too curious to wait until I get home. Is this an ad for Depends adult diapers or a different product called Depend?
It's for adult diapers.
OK, so without seeing the commercial, I can't really address the gender binary. However, there is a sex difference to which diapers a person needs. Different kinds of genitalia need absorptive material in different places. So, penises need one type, vulvas need another type. Don't ask me how to best serve the intersex market. Market research to see what the most common urethral configurations are, maybe?
I definately agree that sex differences do not need to be highlighted by targeting gender.
Yeah, I wish I had clarified my headline use of "gender binary" a bit more. While I don't know much about the actual coverage Depend and other products provide, I could see there being some sense in having different leak protection for different people. I wasn't focusing on the product's actual use so much as the way the commercial pitted men against women to advertise it.
Also, this may just have been me, but did anyone else get a creepy "E-Harmony" sort of vibe from this?? gah...
You know, when I'm to the point where I have to wear Depends, I doubt I'm going to give a shit about expressing myself with what sort of panties I wear. I mean, come on Depends, once we're all shitting ourselves, does it really matter who rules the world? How ridiculous.
That's when it's MOST important to be king of the hill.
I don't think the "for women" and "for men" versions are for expressing yourself or for style. I've seen them in stores, and they are cut and absorb differently passed on where each sex would have the most leakage issues.
"I guess worn-out stereotypes reemphasizing 'traditional' gender roles is how the Depend brand thinks it should target its clientele? Unacceptable."
You may not like it, but I don't think older people would respond as well to an ad that did not reflect the values they grew up on.
Its an ad for adult diapers. Shouldn't it focus, on I don't know, maybe the product. I honestly don't see how ranting about "Who rules the world" or in another ad from this company "Why women are bad drivers" is a conveying ad for this product.
Plus for the women and men lines, they could have just said something like "We all need someone to depend on." I really don't see any need for "the values they grew up on" in a ad for this product.
Wow. The ageism in some of these posts is incredible. The professor you so admire? The boss you hope to emulate someday? He or she may well be wearing a product like this. One in three women over the age of 50 deals with some level of incontinence. Men who have had any kind of prostate intervention are likely to have some sort of bladder control issue afterward.
Whether or not the ad is sexist, it's for a product that addresses an important issue. Hell, it's a product that lets people leave their homes and go to work. What's a better way to advertise it? Anyone have any ideas?
How about by demonstrating how it lets people leave their homes and go to work? Is that really so hard?
Um...What ageism?
I kind of expected some ageist comments from this post but I haven't actually seen any. Which comments are ageist?
No one here is arguing that the product in itself is not important, just that the way they chose to advertise it doesn't talk about the product itself or its benefits to the individuals, but about some abstract idea. In what way is that ageism?
What is with the comments recently?? Disliking an ad aimed at older people is no more agest than disliking an ad aimed at women is sexist against women or vice-versa.
I agree that it's not a great ad. I wasn't talking about the overall critique of the ad but the specific content of some of the comments.
Alizana, you're right, that would work. Sorry, it was one comment in particular that got to me. Will now calm down and compose my letter to the manufacturer.
Really, you're surpised--nay shocked--that there's a gender binary in underwear? I mean, what women prefer briefs to panties? How many men prefer to panties to boxers? And you're surprised that Depends would segment its products based on these preferences?
Actually, I do know women who prefer boxers, and I know men who prefer underpants cut like panties, but with accomodation for male anatomy.
There are necessary difference in cut for different bodies, but that does need to translate into gender.
*doesn't* need
fingers faster than brain
what women prefer briefs to panties?
This one, for starters.
And unless you've been examining strangers' underwear on the subway, I wouldn't be so quick to assume that real-life preferences line up neatly with genderized marketing.
You don't have to have x-ray vision on the subway to observe this...try any Victoria's Secret...or for that matter Wal-Mart's underwear aisle...
That's still going on what marketers think people should wear, not what they actually do.
Besides, I doubt that anyone on this on all sites is particularly surprised that marketers have created a gender binary in yet another unnecessary place and used it to reinforce tired stereotypes, but that doesn't mean we have to be happy about it.
wow, your x-ray superpowers exceed my normal vision...i see millions of women buying panties & millions of men buying briefs, while you see millions of women buying panties and then giving them to millions of men once they get home, and millions of men buying tighty whiteys and giving them to millions of women at home...
Ignoring this for a second, could you tell me how that translates to a commercial about who rules the world and stuttering women too afraid to express their opinion?
No, no one is surprised nor shocked about gender binary in underwear.
If you actually read the post and comments and thought about it, you'd understand that no one is arguing against Depends having different types of underwear for men and women. It's about them promoting their product with gender differences when it's not relevant.
and how the fuck does the difference in how men and women answer that stupid question have to do with the PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES in their bodies that would require different types of Depends? It's just such a stupid leap of logic i can't even handle it. "men and women think differently, therefore we put leak protection in different areas! obviously!"
...biology determines geography if you will...anatomical differences being what they are impacts the positioning of leak coverage...
No one is arguing this, it is the question that they pose to the two individuals that is completely unrelated.
As evann said- thinking differently and leaking differently are not as correlated as Depend who like to think.
These ads kill me. Obviously assigning gender to anything is ridiculous to me, but from a purely practical standpoint do we really need two different cuts of Depends? I have changed A LOT of diapers on incontinent patients and in my experience, extra padding in slightly different places will not make a big difference. Everything is in the same general area and with the extreme ranges in shapes and sizes of people it seems useless to try to cater to where a penis may be versus a female urethra.
I'm not saying I like the ad, but...
The woman's "Do I really need to answer that question?" seemed to have more of a sarcastic "You don't already know it's women?" tone than a hesitant tone. that's how it came across to me, anyhow.
It's still reinforcing a gender binary, as though the answers they give to the question are somehow rooted in the shape of their genitalia (which is the point of having two different shapes of diapers), but I think in that one detail you're seeing something that's not there.
aren't we talking about a sex binary here? not to say that it's ok, but nothing about this commercial or depends screams "gender identity" to me - it seems to be about physical sex... still wrong, but completely different, no?
While I agree that different genitalia have different needs, and the woman's initial response seemed less of a delay tactic and more of a sardonic statement, if the makers of Depend REALLY wanted to get their point across, they could have put up non-lewd illustrations of a penis and a vulva in lieu of responses to their asinine question.
I could understand the anatomical needs for different adult diapers. But why make this a woman v. man thing? Couldn't they just say "Hey look men and women have different needs", and even then that's almost just as bad...
I think it would have been hard for them to think of a good anecdote for this commercial without sounding sexist or, again, making it about woman v. man...
It's certainly very irksome how both men and women, young and old alike, continue to indulge gender stereotypes. Although I didn't find the woman's tone hesitant, the way the answers were framed did reinforce the cliche that men rule the *outside world* and that women secretly control their doings by being subtly pushy wives ("go ask your wife", as she said), and thus in an indirect--making it all the more feminine (!arhh!!)--way control the world.
Maybe I'm reading to much into it, but I think that putting way too much emphasis on the (other than biological) differences between men and women just limits the potentials in both sexes.
"Depends" ads like this
are why I prefer to use
"Oops I Crapped My Pants"
"the man answers immediately and confidently, while the woman's response is prefaced with "oh dear" and "do I really need to answer that one?", as if stating her opinion is somehow scandalizing."
your interpretation is way off. first of all, her question "do I really need to answer that one?" wasn't because of that scandal involved; it's because she found the answer so obvious.
to me, if anything, it was more sexist *against* men as exemplified by the man's shrugging his shoulders and the woman's "ask your wife" comment. paints the man as powerless and passive with his go with the flow attitude.
this post further exemplifies what happens when idle minds are given a blog to spout their ideas. you look at every little facet of life, every commercial and TV show looking for some instance in which sexism is prevalent in society.
does this mean that women are still so down-trodden or that you're just looking really, really hard?
I don't like the use of gender binaries to advertise, but I don't think the point of this ad was specifically to pit men against women. At the end of the commercial, the voice over says "for women...and men" in a way that it almost seems like it's telling men that it's ok for them to use this product too. Given the culture we're in, I think most men would feel emasculated if they had to wear such a product, especially if they are otherwise still pretty active. It's a signal that they are aging and less virile, where with women, wearing a Depends is more common. Many women who give birth, for example, have issues with incontinence as they age, and wearing these products is still part of the culture that tells women that our body functions should be kept secret. I really think this ad is part attempt to make sure the Depends name is out there, and part attempt to attract more male consumers. I still think, though, that resorting to gender binaries is lazy, especially when the commercial has little to nothing to do with the product.
If you thought that Depends commercial was bad, check this one out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8n76TiTieA&NR=1
I don't see why people can't accept this fact: some people are good drivers, some are bad. Driving skill - or just skill in general - has nothing to do with gender.
But I guess it's too much to ask for people to accept that.
Liz:
if driving skill has nothing to do with gender then why do men pay higher insurance premiums? and if you feminists cared such much about gender identity and equality you would rally for lower premiums for men....but you don't because it doesn't benefit women...hypocrits.
Liz:
if driving skill has nothing to do with gender then why do men pay higher insurance premiums? and if you feminists cared such much about gender identity and equality you would rally for lower premiums for men....but you don't because it doesn't benefit women...hypocrits.