During Sunday night’s season première of “Mad Men,” Woodford Reserve, a respected, mid-shelf bourbon, aired a new national ad campaign with a thirty-second spot entitled “Bookshelf.” It featured a weekend-on-the-lake feel and a lot of sexism.
The commercial featured a low-sexy female voice:
"When I see a man drinking bourbon,
I expect him to be the kind who could build me a bookshelf. But not in the way that one builds a ready-made bookshelf. He will already know where the lumberyard is. He’ll get the right amount of wood without having to do math. He’ll let me use the saw, and not find it cute that I don’t know how to use the saw."
When I first saw the commercial, I thought it was great. I just caught the end line about not being called cute for not knowing how to use a saw and thought "oh how refreshing." Upon actually reading the text, I realized it was clearly a trite use of gender roles and a woman very much living in a traditional masculine world.
I realized the alcohol industry is a typical detractor from progressive portrayals of females in advertising, especially Smirinoff, Corona and Budweiser. It brought to mind today's analysis of sports as a ideological point of reinforcement through events like "military appreciation night", and that alcohol is a typical pairing with sports events and perhaps the collision of messages is self sustaining. Alcohol also regularly airs patriotic themed commercials and recommends a traditional definition of gender, particularly the "carefree dude".
It seems that plenty of commercial industies stand to benefit from cashing in on the US Military's version of gender roles and masculinity.
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