As a football fan, the Super Bowl--and the Tennessee Titans’ chance at a national championship--was a definite plan for my Sunday night.As is always the case, the commercials were nearly as anticipated and to some people more so than the actual game.Undoubtedly, commercials influence our buying habits and consumer choices; however, we seldom think about them as giving us any sort of picture of the nature of American life.That is the role of dramas and sitcoms, not of the Mountain Dew commercial.However, as I had been discussing with a friend of mine earlier in the day what I might want to write my women’s studies paper on, when the commercials started I was much more conscious than I normally would have been of what sort of messages of gender roles and stereotypes were being sent by the commercials.Countless commercials appeared in which women played no role; the overwhelming majority of the women who did appear were cast in roles which fit a general stereotype of what women are “supposed” to be.Of course, on thinking about it this seems perfectly reasonable.Football is typically (or at least stereotypically) an interest of males; presumably marketing departments research their audience and choose commercial themes which will appeal to those audiences.The question then seems not to be why firms choose to air such commercials--economic concerns dictate such decisions--but what it is about these commercials that appeals to the target audience, which is presumably males.Obviously a complete discussion of such an idea would be impossible and well beyond the scope of a three page paper.However, it is interesting all the same to analyze what images of the roles of women--and men--are presented as a general summary of what at least marketing executives believe will appeal to the “typical” viewer of the Super Bowl.
 
    Perhaps the most striking gender issue I noticed was not any particular treatment of women in commercials, but their overall absence.The vast majority of the firms buying advertising slots during the game fell into one of three categories: cars, beer (Budweiser), or internet financial firms.Particularly in the latter two of these, women were rarely the focus of the commercial.Men sat around in bars drinking together, enjoying what seemed to be a “one of the guys” sort of sensation as they all drank their Budweisers.They were businessmen, in coat and tie, in vast rooms of all males or at all male board tables.Women were not explicitly shown to be not a part of such activities; they just were not there.Would a woman--or a younger girl--watching such commercials feel that she could not be a part of a group of people sitting around together drinking, or could not succeed in business?In general, probably not.But would she have the idea--however subconscious--that such pastimes or occupations were generally the realm of males, or that no one “expected” her to join them?Such a possibility seems very likely.
 

    Another interesting portrayal of men appeared when the Titans’ coach or trainer weighed his men and announced proudly that they had gained 25 pounds on average in the last year; “Thanks, Kroger!”.I wondered whether, if the expected audience were more significantly female, this commercial might have been followed by one which would thank a weight loss group for helping a group of women lose an average of 25 pounds.

 

    Women were not, of course, totally absent from the commercials.In one of the Budweiser commercials, a woman was indeed one of the main characters; she sat by her male companion as he received a phone call from his friends who were drinking and watching “the game” down at the bar and lied to them to try to keep them from realizing that he had, in fact, been compelled to watch a presumably romantic movie (the woman oohed and aahed as she watched the screen and grabbed his arm to get him to look).When the (male) veterinarian left to go deliver a baby horse--and immediately congratulate its father for all the hard work it had done, presumably in the conceiving of the young horse--his female companion was shown too, waiting for him in a cocktail dress at a dinner or some other formal affair.And when men gathered around the window of a bridal store, it was to be chagrined at their brides-to-be as they fought over gifts in the store (“is that one your wife?”)Clearly women are part of the lives of nearly all men; in watching their portrayals in these commercials, however, one would think that they were merely petty, overly romantic wives.

 

    Interestingly, though not in a commercial, the cameras repeatedly focused on a couple of the players’ wives, introducing them as the wife of a Titan or a Ram.This seems reasonable, as the players are the focus of attention and the spectators only of interest as they relate to the players; what interested me more, however, was the description I heard given of one of the women.She was, announced the sportscaster, a former Rose Parade Princess and the mother of three children.Perhaps these were what the sportscaster considered the facts of most interest about this woman to the fans; however, I could not help but wonder if, at any event which featured women, their husbands would be introduced as “the father of three children and a former college Homecoming King”.It seemed that it would be much more likely that the husband would be “a lawyer in town” or “a University of Alabama graduate”.

 

    Obviously, I do not want to suggest that every commercial held some overt--or even subtle--gender statements.For every commercial like the one where the father had to deal with “something different”--a son who told him after a basketball game that what he really wanted to do was dance (as he danced around the middle of the court)--there was one like the group of men and women dancing and singing similarly in some sort of take off on the popular Gap commercials.However, it is significant that such widespread ideas seem to exist of what men do, whether on the job and with their buddies, or in relation to the women in their lives.If the marketers are on target--and it seems unlikely that they are far off, since their companies invest millions in these commercials and would presumably not do so if it didn’t work to their favor--then what men, as the primary targeted audience for the Super Bowl, identify with is other men, doing “manly” things, as the women in their lives stand by or do “womanly” things, whether watching sappy movies or dressing in wedding dresses as they fight over gifts.As young boys grow up watching the game, it seems like a fairly short logical step to conclude that they, too, will learn to identify with males as they are portrayed to be.How would this cycle break?Unfortunately, it seems impossible to propose a good answer.If nothing else, the content of Super Bowl commercials shows that general gender ideas are deeply imbedded into American culture in ways that few people ever think about.