Posted by
Playful Walrus on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 12:26:25 PM
How many times have we heard that unrealistic media portrayals of women are driving girls to eating disorders, mental illness, and plastic surgery? Well, here’s a little twist on that.
KELLY IN AUSTIN writes in to Dear Abby:
My husband gets aggravated with romantic commercials on television -- the ones where men do sweet things for their wives, like putting jewelry on them while they sleep, or pulling out that special gift at the dinner table.
Notice these examples both are about the man spending a lot of $$$ on an object for the woman’s enjoyment, most likely an object that is not practical.
He says the commercials try to make men feel guilty because they aren't like the ones portrayed.
That’s exactly what they are trying to do, and trying to create a sense of entitlement in women. My own wife was able to easily see through one jewelry commercial that flat-out portrayed a series of bigger and bigger diamonds as “love” growing over the time.
I have tried telling him that men are, indeed, this way, but I couldn't think of any examples other than my brother and my father, who are very romantic.
Some men are that way - buying expensive, impractical gifts. And some men are romantic in ways that don’t involve payment plans.
Don't most men know how to sweep a woman off her feet?
If your husband doesn’t, why did you marry him? Most men have some vague idea of what women in general want, thanks to endless media reminders, but women are not clones. Different women want different things. An attentive husband with a communicative wife (not one who expects him to read her mind) will figure out how what she finds romantic, and if he wants to please her, he will provide her with romance.
Dear Abby responds:
Gifts are not the only way to make someone special feel loved.
Thank you!
Commercials are created in order to manipulate the public into buying, and if the amount of consumer debt being carried by U.S. households is any indication, that strategy has been extremely successful.
Right – and my wife is glad I don’t take us into debt. Good financial practices and saving for the future mean more to her than shiny things.
While diamonds may be "a girl's best friend," most women know that a life partner who gives them attention, affection, praise and assistance when they need it is a jewel more precious than any stone could ever be.
Way to go, Dear Abby.
If unrealistic media portrayals are harmful to a girl’s body image, they are also harmful to a boys financial health. Men are pressured to buy cars they can’t afford, buy dinners they can’t afford, and buy jewelry they can’t afford. Right now as I type, there are boys being pressured to spend a lot of money on a prom so that a teenage girl can live out the materialistic dreams Seventeen Magazine and like-media have been putting in her head.
As for jewelry – “two month’s salary” is an advertising campaign, not a rule of etiquette. Men should be aware of that before they buy an engagement ring, and women should keep that in mind when their man proposes.
The fact is, most television programming, and thus television advertising, is directed at women. Yes, there are some exceptions, but for the most part, television is directed at women or at least with their sensibilities in mind because it is women who do more shopping. You see these ads portraying men who are everything women say they want, giving women these incredible gifts that must mean these men are at the higher end of the earning range, and yet these men have all of this time to shower their attention on these women. You don’t see a lot of TV commercials portraying wives as smoking hot, young, and constantly ready for an enthusiastic romp in the marital bed, at least not with their husbands.
On television, we bash men for their “lust” but not women for their envy.
There’s a soap company “campaign” for “real” beauty, that supposedly portrays real (read: not stereotypical bikini or catwalk model) women. This is understandable, because they are not marketing to men. They are marketing to women, many of whom welcome the message. It isn’t really about making women feel better. It is about making them feel good about buying that brand of soap. Now, how likely is it that we’re going to see a “campaign for real wealth” that portrays average-income men as adequate? Not likely.
Please don’t get me wrong. I tend to find the twiggy look or “boy with breasts” look on women to not be as appealing as a woman with natural curves. That former look is mainly championed by the gay men in the fashion model and theatrical world, not by your average heterosexual man.
But I think women need to understand that just as most women do not look like an airbrushed, carefully lit and posed 20-year-old centerfold model, most men are not in a position to spend like rich soap opera characters.