Meg DeJong - Response to "The Male Consumer as Loser"

        One of the most important points I feel Messner made in “The Media Consumer as Loser: Beer and Liquor Ads in Mega Sports Media Events” is that media advertisers base their advertisements on the way people live their lives. Essentially, the images expressed in advertisements are a direct result of larger social and cultural shifts. In recent years, alcohol advertisements geared toward men have focused on the unstable state of heterosexual white masculinity in our society. Over the years, minorities groups, such as women, people of color, and gay people have begun to gain more power in our society. As a result, the ultimate power that white heterosexual men in our society use to hold is beginning to be brought into question. Advertisers recognize the vulnerable state that straight white men are in, and thus exploit that vulnerability when targeting them as consumers. Accordingly, we have seen the emergence of men portrayed as “losers” in beer and liquor advertisements. However, the advertisers set out to assure the men that while they may be “losers” and may not be able to get the “hot” women, they can always rely on the company’s product, in this case, beer and liquor.
When reading Messner’s article, I couldn’t help but feel that things are headed even more in this direction since the article was published. The article examines advertisements that were aired during the Super Bowl or in the swimsuit edition of Sport’s Illustrated in 2002 and 2003. While this was only about a decade ago, many things have changed in our society since then. For example, consider the 2008 presidential election. Not only do we now have Barack Obama serving as the country’s first ever Black president, but a woman, Sarah Palin, came very close to the vice presidency, and another woman, Hillary Clinton came close to becoming the first woman president. Additionally, gay people have been gaining more and more rights in our country and can now marry in several states. While all these are changes that are moving our country closer to equality, it has subsequently put heterosexual white masculinity into an even more vulnerable state. Considering this, I feel that advertisers may now focus more on portraying the straight, white man as a “loser” and playing on their vulnerabilities and ultimately unstable place in our society. I think it would be interesting to see how the images of men have changed, or stayed the same, if Messner were to analyze Super Bowl commercials and ads in the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated from 2011 and 2012.
The thing that struck me most about the advertisements featured in Messner’s articles was just how blatantly women were objectified. Women in the commercials or magazine ads never played a role besides being the center of the heterosexual male gaze or as the “bitch” that men had to deal with. In both cases, the women in the advertisement served the purpose of reaffirming the belief that men can only rely on each other and their beer or liquor. In essence, women were depicted as an inherent threat to masculinity: they either held the power to reject or humiliate men or could manipulate and ensnare them into a committed, open relationship. Thus, whether the women were depicted as “bitches” or “whores,” they ultimately represented a threat to the unstable state of heterosexual (and usually) white masculinity.
I believe that the biggest problem with this portrayal of women in advertisements is that it allows heterosexual men to target their anger about their unstable, vulnerable position in our society toward women. This portrayal of women could have serious repercussions in terms of spikes in domestic violence and sexual assault. Not only do the advertisements allow men to target to their anger toward women, but they also validate them doing so. In the world of these advertisements, women are never more than a “bitch” or a “whore” that threaten white heterosexual masculinity and are thus the perfect target of this group’s anger.