Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Hi, I'm a Girl

So, it's been an interesting fall already on the gender front.  At least, you know as far as pop culture goes.  The Monkey See blog has an excellent post about how many of this fall's new TV shows seem to be existing in some place where there are manly men and wimpy men only. (And yes, I have heard folks mention that the article focuses on a strict gender binary, which is fair, but even within that frame, I think we can all agree that some of the new stuff still, you know, sucks at portraying any attempt at a realistic spectrum.)
And sure, I read about trends and things so I had noticed this movement in the world of soda where attempts to lure men to diet soda have moved from the been there, done that we swear cool guys drink this too of the nineties (by the way, just went and looked that up, aw, good times) to sodas with supposedly manlier labels and removal of the word diet in place of words like max and zero. I do not have access to whatever research there is on male soda drinking habits, but let's imagine for a moment that there is some and that somewhere in there it provides reason to believe that there are tons of men who secretly wish that they could drink a low calorie soda, but are attached to the idea that low calorie sodas are for girls. 
(And no, I'm not touching with a ten foot pole the ads for low calorie beers because I could write a treatise on the inequities and insanities found there.) 
Now, in the interest of disclosure, I personally do not drink low calorie sodas (personal choice, totally not based on my gender) but I do occasionally drink soda.  And when I do (I sound like I'm in an ad, weird, not my intention) I drink Dr. Pepper.  So, I am so sorry to hear that the decision has apparently been made somewhere that just showing (supposedly) manly men sipping their manly drinks while doing manly things is not quite overt enough for their new low calorie soda.  No, they have decided to come right out and say, "Not for women."  (Not kidding - look here. SishFW, you can choose to click the video portion or not.)
As Gothamist rightly points out this is actually equally offensive to men and women.  (So, um, great job there.) Soda is not gender based.  (Unless the soda makers have something they need to tell us.)  Now certainly Dr. Pepper has the right to market their soda based on gender.  But I remain a bit amazed that they would choose to alienate so much of their potential population (and no, I do not just mean women.)