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Am I Too Quick to Detect Sexism Here?

4/9/2014

 
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So yesterday, in the course of my mindless web surfing, I stumbled upon this short Slate piece by Alison Griswold about Taco Bell's attempts to make an impact in the fast-food breakfast wars.  I'm no fan of McDonalds, and Taco Bell ranks even worse in my mind.  And, frankly, anyone who steps into either establishment seeking a nourishing breakfast is just plain stupid.  

But what got me about Griswold's article, which critiques Taco Bell's recent commercials, is this last paragraph:

Plus, for all that Taco Bell is trying to paint McDonald's as boring and old-school, the commercial's final shot—of the middle-aged male character munching a fast-food wrap all alone outside his cluttered garage—seems more like an advertisement for poor life choices.


Um, what exactly is it that makes Griswold think a man, alone in the morning, is "an advertisement for poor life choices"?

I mean, gee whiz, if Griswold's preferred breakfast is an Egg McMuffin, how much calorically worse can Taco Bell's offerings possibly be?  Nor can his "cluttered garage" really be held against him.  I mean, really, who's garage isn't the teensiest bit cluttered?


Please tell me I'm not alone in detecting a sexist undertone to Griswold's criticism, but what seems to drive Griswold's animus is that, well, there's this middle class-ish and seemingly capable forty-something year-old male who is "alone" (i.e., unmarried and un-coupled).  

Which, ipso facto in her mind, must mean he's made "poor life choices."  Otherwise he'd have a wife and family bristling with little children.  He'd be a dad, a husband, a life partner, a provider. Implicit also in Griswold's judgement is the thought that, well, this otherwise decent-looking man must have really done something wrong-- "poor life choices"-- to cause him to be separated from whatever previous people were in his life.

So, is a man's marital status reason to condemn him?  Have we now chugged into so moralistically strident times that a single male deserves condemnation?

Okay.  If you think I'm over-reacting (as I've sometimes been known to do), imagine the genders being flipped.  Imagine an ad featuring a woman alone eating her breakfast sandwich outside a cluttered garage.  Would anyone use that image to accuse her of "poor life choices"? 

jenniey
4/10/2014 01:05:02 am

Not too quick at all. I had to read the article and watch the ad to understand completely (in other news, I think I just watched an ad in order to watch yet another ad) -- the end shot is completely undeserving of that final line. Nothing about that shot struck me as "poor life choices," meaning it completely lends itself to only one conclusion, which is the conclusion you've come to -- that there is one "positive life choice" for men and being single, having a mullet, and basically living your life beyond your 20s is simply not it.

It's all very bizarre though, because if you do only read the article, you'd sort of blindly trust the author, but when you watch the ad the whole argument crumbles. Why does this kind of crap keep slipping through? Anyway, his garage isn't even cluttered. He just "made like $700 on Craigslist."

Who really cares, we say? Well -- the person who decides to publish an actual snippet-article about the ad on Slate probably should.

Now my feathers are ruffled. Thanks a lot, Nick. :)

Nick
4/10/2014 02:25:01 am

Ruffling feathers is what I'm all about :)

Thanks for writing, and confirming my suspicions are within the ballpark of feasibility. This was an especially hard thing to post-- I kept hemming to myself, wondering if it was I being overly harsh, but that "poor life choices" line just kept creeping into my thoughts.


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