A Video Worth 1000 Words: Critiquing Dodge's Sexist SuperBowl Ad

As Alex DiBranco has already noted, the ads during last week's SuperBowl were, to put it plainly, really sexist. And, of course, Dodge's "Man's Last Stand" ad stands out. The ad was a pity-fest for men who have to clean the sink after they shave and be civil to their mother-in-laws. O the horror! I could critique this till I am blue in the face, but perhaps the best line of attack is through another video ... this time airing women's oppressions.

Produced by young filmmaker MacKenzie Fegan, "Woman's Last Stand" makes men's complaints voiced in the original ad by Dodge look pretty silly in comparison. While the original ad made even the most basic forms of human decency sound like a chore, Fegan's spoof does a really good job of pinpointing serious forms of sexism today: "I will make 75 cents for every dollar you make doing the same job."

Fegan's video counters a core male complaint that has been around for many years now: that work and marriage oppress men. In the 1950s and 1960s, films and pop culture began to portray the sad, unfulfilled life of the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. (Think Mad Men: who is more oppressed, Don or Betty?) Sure, it's understandable that pushing papers behind a desk might not be somebody's ideal job. But men who complain about being tied down by women and roped in by responsibility seem to think that women thought up marriage as some sort of trap. Historically, it's the other way around.

You could check with an anthropologist, but since women are only now emerging from millennia of being second-class citizens, I don't think marriage is a social institution they thought up. In past decades, women were pushed to drop out of college to get married and have children. Even today, marriage means more compromise for women than for men. Women put their careers on hold at a higher rate than men, forfeiting their goals to raise the kids and take care of the grandparents. The lack of respect for women's careers in the home spills into the workforce, where women are paid less, promoted less, and underrepresented in leadership positions.

Back to Dodge and the Super Bowl. That Dodge can get away with airing an ad with such a perverse and damaging view of the world is deeply unsettling. It demonstrates how far women still have to go.

But I do take consolation in one fact: since the home was women's domain when advertising began to play an influential role in American culture, women were targeted as the ultimate consumers. Often mocked or stereotyped for shopping, women are constantly bombarded with pressure to "buy this" or "wear that" in order to improve their lives. Dodge's ad has adapted this exact message for men: explicitly telling men that to be masculine you have to shop; to fight your oppressor you have to buy. It's actually demeaning to them. In the words of Fegan's ad, "I feel so f***ing sorry for you."