There was a commercial recently about a long-suffering guy who goes shopping with his girlfriend, and whenever she asks for his opinion about something, he gives it, and she does the opposite. He uses this annoying characteristic of hers to trick her into giving him the phone he wants.
I think the OP is experiencing confirmation bias, recalling only the commercials that make men look bad and forgetting the ones that make women look bad.
Generally speaking, I think it’s considered okay to portray men as stupid in commercials because men don’t mind it. Most male humor is based around the idea of us guys doing stupid things, isn’t it?
Commercials like the above make women look bad (“annoying characteristic”, as you say), but do they explicitly make them look stupid, like some commercials do for men?
What TV channels does the OP watch? Stupid people are in virtually all commercials. Gender doesn’t matter. There seems to be a deliberate plan among companies to portray their customers as idiots.
Classic example: Ashlee Simpson in some sort of fast food commercials.
I think it’s because society is still sensitive on issue, due to centuries of a male-dominated society where women were considered less intelligent than men.
So, showing women as stupid in a scene where the man is smart and mature would hit a raw nerve.
Men don’t have this historical baggage, so that’s why it’s “safe” to portray them as stupid.
Personally, I think it is time to stop this imbalance in portrayals.
Johnny Carson voice:
You can use those things as air freshners? I did not know that !
Yes, because she’s so clueless that he’s able to trick her into giving him the phone he wants.
But generally, maybe women are portrayed as bitchy/uptight/annoying/mere sexual objects, while men are portrayed as hapless/stupid/goofy. I’m not sure one is worse or better than the other.
Do you mean the Glade candle woman? That’s the first one I thought of. “Hey, use out product if you identify with a woman so pathetic she lies to her friends and tells them her grocery store candles came from France or are some cookies she just got through baking!”
It’s not just in commercials. It’s a staple of kids literature, too.
Last June, as Father’s Day neared, our local Barnes & Noble had a “story hour” for little kids. All the stories picked out for that day were about “Daddy and Me,” and I swear, EVERY one of them followed the same basic plot: 'Mommy left Daddy to take care of me for a day. Daddy nearly burned down the house while trying to make me breakfast, so we then went out and had Cokes and doughnuts for breakfast. He tried to take me to the park, but it was a disaster, and I nearly got killed because he wasn’t paying attention. I was covered with mud from head to toe. Daddy tried to wach my clothes, but flooded the house with bubbles because he couldn’t figure out how to use the washing machine. When Mommy got home, she screamed, fixed eveerything, and put Daddy in the doghouse for a month."
Look, I’m not exactly Mr. Sensitive New Age Man, but I’ve managed to make breakfast for my son practically every day for 5 years now without any catastrophes striking. I’ve changed a few thousand diapers, washed his clothes a few thousand times, nursed him through illness a dozen times, everything any normal parent does.
Right now, I can hear Chris Rock saying “So, what do you want, a cookie? You’re SUPPOSED to do that!”
Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m not looking for praise or credit or any kind of reward for just doing my job as a Dad. But for crying out loud, is it too much to ask that kids’ books NOT present us Dads as bumbling idiots who can’t do the simplest household tasks?
Yes, that’s the reason. But society is the way it is: I don’t have an objection to these ads - I ignore them, but not any more than I do with most other ads - and I don’t think anybody being harmed. Commercials suck, but from the standpoint of doing comedy, if we protect everybody’s sensitivities it’s basically impossible to make jokes.
Lots of good points. You’ll also notice that if there’s a white dude and a non-white dude in an ad, the former will be the dolt and the latter the smart guy (or somewhat lesser dolt). I think the idea is that poking fun at minorities would be, well, too easy. And that members of a group largely thought to be the ‘default,’ the norm, won’t mind having that everyman status thrown back in their faces, at least not when it comes to fast food or room deodorizers. Haven’t noticed it much for status items like expensive cars pr electronic equipment.
You know, the purpose of advertisements is to sell stuff. If portraying women as stupid sold stuff, then ads would do it, as long as it made more sales than it lost.
The OP really should ask, “Why does portraying women as stupid evidently not sell stuff?”
The answer probably is “Because women do a lot of the shopping.”