Glossy Magazine Spam Is Still Spam
cartoon image by marriedtothesea.com
Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon notes that 'tis the season when it becomes really clear why, while not in anyone's *personal* self-interest the "no-sex" class theory of women who experience no innate desire for men and therefore must be bought. She also notes that it's not just men who feel insulted this year.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised this year to read a couple of blog posts written by men just slamming the ever-living shit out of the popular holiday commercial message, “All women are whores, just set the price.” Otherwise known as ads pushing luxury goods like diamonds and cars with a fairly unmistakeable message.
These ads go far beyond just saying, “Hey, it’s fun to spoil someone you love on occasion,” and straight into making rather fucked up insinuations about how marriage and heterosexual relationships are transactional—her love and sex for your baubles. That women give love because they love and have sex because they desire doesn’t enter the equation. There was one ad awhile back that was pretty close to explicit on this—a guy runs through the streets declaring he loves a woman. She’s angry with him for his romantic and inexpensive gesture. He presents a diamond. Now she likes him again. Women’s affections are a commodity, says the ad, not a normal human expression.
She cites Copyranter, Jamie at Masculinity and Its Discontents, MarkH at denialism blog, and PZ Night at Pharyngula.
So yes, there's the whole idea that whether it's cash, check, or joint check account, male/female relationships always boil down to one thing. Hump!
And actually some of the ads are even more regressive. It seems to me that a hidden reinforcer here is that *if* one is able to surprise one's spouse with a huge-ticket item like a gift-wrapped Mercedes then it's because you give her a "household allowance" but otherwise don't let her look at the books at all. Either that or, as PZ Night and a number of Marcotte's commenters point out, you've unilaterally thrown your household budget into some degree of hock to pull it off. Charming.
And *even if* the intention isn't directly to regard such gifts as pro-quid-quo trinket-for-sex deals, there's still the issue of extravagant gifts as an expression of his (unnecessary in a two-income family) insecurities about being a "good provider" and therefore *worthy* of sex. Because, you know, even if she isn't a dirty whore who puts out for trinkets then she's a saint who lowers herself to slake his animal lust if and only if he's worthy enough. Which, really, are the only possibilities inside the virgin/whore mindset.
There are other possibilities for relationships... but they're not so good for sales. Which is a bit of a shame. There's nothing wrong at all, at all with exchanging gifts. But trying to "impress" each other? Not so hot.
Figleaf, you know I'm perfectly fond of your, um, clock just as it is.
But seriously, how much do men really still think that their women must be bought and paid for? I know guys a generation older than me did. I once sat through a truly mortifying writing class at the community college where one of the men (20 years my senior) read aloud a poem he'd written about a date he'd gone on with a female classmate. He'd paid; she hadn't put out. It was mean and nasty and ultimately only really embarrassing to this dude, not that he was sensitive enough to be much bothered. (It was also really lousy poetry.)
But I know very few men my age (40s and 50s) who think that way. Maybe the men I know are not a representative sample. I'm wondering if this sort of pay-to-play thinking is actually undergoing a renaissance, or if advertisers are just trying to push it (as other commenters mentioned a post or two back).
Your precious illustration makes me wonder, too, if there are deeper insecurities at work. Y'know, the sort that turn up in my spam folder, like these gems from the last few days:
- Vixens confess, that thin and not so long male sticks in no way are able to please them!
- Your girl does not admire to do it with you for reason of your machine size.
- Instead of trying to make her cum, do it with penis pills. (Huh?)
- Girls like monster cocks, but they don't like yours. Time to change? (Gotta admire the ambiguity on that one. Change what, pray tell? Your cock? Your girl?)
So I'm wondering if for guys who worry about having a "thin male stick," a big, hard diamond might look like a reasonable substitute or supplement? Or is this just totally farfetched? I do think Amanda's right: the old idea that you can buy a woman's loyalty, fidelity, housewifery, and affection is still alive. But might it be also colliding and/or merging with the much newer idea that a man needs to be a satisfying lover if he wants to keep her loyalty? Buying a diamond or sportscar is obviously more easily attainable than achieving a monster dick - but success and a big dick also serve as metaphors for each other. So maybe they're interchangeable to some degree; maybe not.
I'd love to hear some male perspectives on this. And yeah, I know that any guy who's reading here is not going to be overinvested in the idea that "machine size" is crucial to pleasure ... I'm more interested in how these two different pressures might intersect.
[Funny you should mention that "thin skin" thing. Because the same company that did the egregious (legs) open-sesame ad did another one, not technically "true" but obviously playing on sensitivities, that shows the effect jewelry has on women's ability to see, for instance, a suitor's unibrow. There's another one making the rounds that's so pathetic I can't tell which is the original among the multitude of ruthless spoofs, but I *think* the original said something like "suddenly she thinks your jokes are funny again." And, really, as in my post from a week or so ago about 20th-century men's search for "authenticity," as in knowing if your partner's really faking her orgasms, one of the giant psychological insecurities in couples with a dependent partner is never knowing if they even *like* you (let alone love or lust after you) or just *need* to stay on your good side. Yet, of course, buying your way in just... doesn't... change *that* dynamic! Cool question! Thanks, Sungold! --fl]
Well, I live in a cave in some ways, since I hardly ever watch TV, or read newspapers or magazines or much of anything that has advertisements, and completely ignore any internet ads. I do vaguely recall having seen diamond ads somewhen, something like "how else can two months' paychecks last forever?" I found that blatantly ridiculous. A hunk of carbon, which can be manufactured cheaply and even more flawlessly than a natural one, not to mention the artificial scarcity caused by the DeBeers corporation putting about 80% of the world's "ice rocks" in permanent storage? I'm going to pay an ungodly amount of money for that? No way, kthanx. Of course, I was also not aware at the time that such information was not (and probably still isn't) common knowledge.
The concept that women might want gifts as a bribe for sex never would have occurred to me if I hadn't read any of your recent blogs. Nobody I know seems to act as if that "presumption" were true.
[Just to be clear -- the concept isn't that women would want gifts as bribes, the concept is that to one degree or another *men believe it!* In fact, I'm claiming the disconnect between men's indoctrination against women's reality is the basis for almost all of what we call "the war of the sexes" and the basis of Freud's baffled question "what do women want." I just don't get where we get this notion since women are, after all, also human beings and therefore as interested in sex as we are -- but I do know that great huge swaths of society from ancient to modern depends utterly on it. Which means men are living a lie and, worse, to maintain it we're forcing women to live it too... and the wierdest thing of all is that it's a lie that makes us utterly *miserable!* But we persist. And so...? I dunno, but I seem to spend a lot of time blogging about it. :-) Thanks, Nightfall. --fl]