Was it just me or did it seem like advertisers at this year’s Superbowl seem to think that men are having some kind of crisis in this country. So many ads this year had some kind of “this is what a man is” theme, it was a bit disturbing.

There were ads that were mostly just funny: men who are hungry play like little old ladies (Snickers) to ads that were downright misogynistic: tires should be more important than wives (Bridgestone), but the two ads that really got to me were the ones that seemed to be saying that men need to recapture something that they’ve lost, something that apparently women have taken from them.

Dockers aired a “no pants” add, with a bunch of men running around in a field with no pants. They looked goofy, you saw somewhat unflattering shots of them from behind, and they were very nearly frolicking -- not very manly things. At the end of the ad, the tag-line “wear the pants” appears with a very manly looking dude wearing his Dockers pants, standing boldly next to the tag-line. Is Dockers simply issuing a command, or are they also trying to remind us of the phrase “who wears the pants in the relationship” and hinting that men have lost this power, that they’ve given it over to women. It’s just vague enough that you can’t quite be sure but I have my guesses.

(more…)