As I type this, I just finished rolling my eyes at yet another commercial with a man telling a woman her spaghetti-and-meatball dinners on Wednesdays are boring and only good enough for the dog, so she should get Old El Paso. Of course, there is no husband present during this exchange, much less one who would make the damn dinner himself. This is, of course, just one example. Every single commercial these days about cleaning products, laundry detergents, or anything to do with household chores, features women doing all the housework in question. Not. One. Guy. I seem to recall one or two men pushing a Swiffer mop on television something like five years ago. They are gone. Perhaps forever?
What's up with advertisers, anyway? You'd think with a divorce rate of 50 % overall and 65 % for couples married five years or less, a separation rate of 75 % for live-in couples and a break-up rate of who knows how much for people just "in a couple" in general, for all genders and sexual orientations, there would be a demographically significant bunch of guys out there who need to do their own floors, or at least nuke their own frozen dinners. No?
Who writes these things anyway??? It's a bloody epidemic.
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Worldwide, women do ~70% of consumer spending (and it's more like 85% in America). In the States, women do 88% of grocery shopping, 85% of meal preparation, 84% of laundry and other cleaning. (See, say, this or this.
The companies know that it is mostly women buying their products (for whatever reason). So that's who they target their ads at. For those products which men mostly buy, the ads reverse (for instance, men buy ~75% of beer, and beer ads are aimed at men.
Of course, one might suggest that there's a chicken and egg effect, if products are marketed towards untapped (or undertapped) populations, the consuming would shift, but the bigger cultural picture probably can't be shifted by single companies easily enough for them to think they can swim upstream on these issues. (e.g. it's easier to convince women they should use your floor cleaner than it is to convince men they should want clean floors.)
I admit I'm absolutely flummoxed at the over-80-per cent stats. They just don't jibe with the reality of more and more people being single out there. It's like women are doing random men's groceries even when they're not in the house. Are those stats for the whole population or just for married couples? It just sounds really strange.
I agree. I can't figure out where these stats come from. Single men have to shop, unless they're all having their mothers do it or something.
Those stats are misleading.
88% of mothers are responsible for grocery shopping for their households. Not at all the same thing as 88% of grocery shopping is done by women.
The survey in the article purposely did not include households without women. And the stats are only for mothers. Also, suspiciously, they claim that 56% of mothers have children under the age of 1. That seems like an obvious error.
I knew those stats had to be off. Thanks
Not having looked at the statistics, I would also guess that there's a factor of the lifestyle of single men vs. single women. This is a generalization, of course, but my guess is that young single men are less likely to prepare their own meals, and the groceries that they do buy would fall along the lines of ramen noodles or canned and prepared foods.
I'm not sure how true this is anymore. My brother, my male roommates and most of my male friends and my ex boyfriend all cook more than I do and buy more cleaning junk. Granted, I cook and clean less than most-hah! but when compared to my female friends they actually seem to purchase the same or slightly more cleaning/cooking supplies.
I read a report by Nielsen, that this is slowly changing---grocery stores seem to be more intuned with their male customers.
You'd think with the median age of marriage in the US at 28 for both men and women, advertisers would take notice.
I think part of the problem is no one has tackled the problem of masculizing cleaning or what might draw men to a particular cleaning product (i.e. it might be the price more than the shininess.)
Or maybe the women in these ads appeal to men as well? Like, if it's good enough for that hot babe, it's good enough for me?
There does often seem to be an unstated assumption that you're "supposed" to identify with people who match your demographic, and not those who don't, in advertisements, TV shows, movies and the like. It might be a little easier to do so, but just because an advertisement for flour shows a woman baking some cookies doesn't exclude me from identifying with her and thinking "Hey, I could bake some cookies." Yeah, if they really play up how feminine she is it might be harder, but if she bakes some cookies for guests, well, I bake cookies for guests, it's no different. In general, I can't imagine Robin Hood needs separate advertisements to get me to buy their flour just because I'm a man, I can identify with a woman roughly as easily. Even if it's only, say, 90% as effective on me as it would be on an equivalent woman.
Cleaning is different, of course, because men aren't supposed to value cleanliness. Beyond "If you're clean, women will want to press themselves against you.", I don't think I've seen much cleaning advertised to men. Very occasionally "make a professional impression". Writing off men for floor polishers or mildew removers may be a lot easier than trying to retrain them from scratch.
Marketing and advertising oversimplifies or results to cliche to make its point. It makes no pretense whatsoever toward thorough analysis, and that's why it's so dangerous. It lumps us all in together in these sort of characterizations of "every man" or "every woman" in an attempt to reach as many potential consumers as possible.
It's just not set up to tell the complete picture and in many regards it's just peddling lazy logic and stereotype.
I've seen commercials where Gain laundry detergent is being marketed towards men. Without even trying to make it out into the MANLYMANSOAP! or something. It was neat and unexpected.
Huh.
I have seen post were feminist are mad that men are hawking products that have traditionally sold a female actress because expands the 'male as authority figure' notion.
What? I do not understand what you're trying to say.
Can you give an example.
I am trying to track down a specific comment I remember, but its like a needle in a hay stack.
It was about the Tide Commercial where Tim Gunn was hawking a color safe laundry detergent. Someone made a pro forma comment about how they were happy that a guy was selling laundry detergent...
... but were upset that it cast him in the 'male as authority figure' role.
I guess just because they where sick of seeing men as authority figures.
As I said, I am having trouble tracking down the exact comment, and I think it was referring to the Tide commercial, but it could have been something else.
Sounds like this isn't a "feminists are mad" situation and more like a "one person is nitpicking" situation.
I wasn't that poster but I see where I think they are coming from. There is a difference between commercials that are aimed at marketing cleaning products to men and show the average male using them and commercials where a male as authority figure is used to market the product to women. This shows up a lot with cleaning products that pick a big brawny male as the mascot (such as Mr. Clean or the Bounty guy in the flannel, whatever his name is). They swoop in to "rescue the damsel in distress" which happens to be the housewife with the mess. I want to see more commercials for household products like cleansing agents aimed at men or both genders and not ones still aimed at women but with a fictional male mascot saving the day.
Whenever I bring this up, my dad always argues that it's not that men don't cook and clean (even though he certainly doesn't) it's that men don't care which products they buy. He argues that a woman will go into a store and carefully consider which brand of dish soap works well, has the best value, and remember the commercial, while a man tasked to buying dish soap would just run and grab whichever is closest to the end of the aisle.
I don't buy this. Consumer electronics are marketed mainly to men and men aren't expected to shop for them in this way. No, I think it's an assumption about who's shopping for what. And even if you argue that women do most of the shopping for *everything* wouldn't you stop and ask yourself why? It's because it's just another chore that women have the responsibility of doing, along with earning a living, raising the children, cleaning the house, making the appointments, paying the bills, and remembering her mother-in-law's birthday.
What concerns me even more is the lack of single people- male or female- in most commercials, especially those for domestic products. You never see Bob, Mr. Notmarried, at home alone washing the dishes. If you believe advertising, all people are married and as such adhere to gender roles of the 1950s.
Yes, you're right, I hadn't noticed the lack of single people in these commercials before. Of course there are those commercials in which a woman breaks up with and kicks out her mop to engage in a romantic relationship with a Swiffer, lol.