Advertisements regularly feature men as foolish. The main aim of the advertisers is to appeal to women who control and make the majority of purchases. There has been a recent disturbing trend of using images of violence against men to sell products to young women (Sunday Telegraph 14-Sep-97).
The car company Nissan recently placed advertisements in women’s magazines for a car called the Micra targeting younger women who make up 70 percent of the cars buyers. The heading was ‘Hate Male’. The advertisement encouraged women readers to write in and get sent postcard pictures of a man who had been compromised by a women after he had borrowed her car without asking. The pictures are: A man bent in agony holding his crutch, a mans jacket in tatters with both the arms cut off, a male watch being fried in a pan, a man sleeping with half his hair and beard cut off, a women holding a can of opened dog food behind her back and in the background a man is sitting eating, a paper clipping lying on a table of the Bobbitt case entitled: a night to dismember, and a book with the last few pages cut out.
In an advertisement on television by Volkswagen a divorcing husband tries to claim that his VW car is worth a great deal more money than it really is. The wife discovers this overvaluation and gets her own back on the husband by “taking him to the cleaners”. The wife is seen crowing over her victory and thanking VW for their cheapness. The husband is left standing at the kerb side and gets his clothes back from the cleaners torn to shreds (presumably by his wife).
A billboard advertisement for Lee jeans features a naked man lying on the floor. A woman wearing Lee jeans is shown with her stiletto above the man’s buttocks. The caption reads “Put the boot in”.
An advertisement for Wallis clothes featuring in women’s magazines, shows men about to be killed because they are staring at women. In one, a man is about to have his throat cut because his barber is staring at a pretty girl.