Take, for example, the two tragic bookends of the last decade. The events of 9/11 reintroduced the machoization of American culture, Berg says, and the Great Recession shocked men in a unique way.



"According to many scientific studies, the most important aspect of manhood is the ability to support one's family," she says. "When the recession messed with that, it messed with something fundamental to masculinity." As a result, we saw more ads responding to men's softness, or emasculation. It was a boomerang against "the end of men."

***



With the help of Berg and editors at The Atlantic, I reviewed some of the more famously borderline-sexist ads over the last ten years and compared them with older spots. What has happened is that sexism has become sort of camp in American society. Racism's implication in American history is beyond question, and a racist remark is considered, in Berg's fine terms, "a violation of something sacred."



A certain kind of sexism, however, is still considered pretty funny and not terribly sacred. In most modern ads, there are two kinds of sexism. First there is winking sexism, where women are objectified but something in the ad seems to acknowledge to the audience: "We know we're being sexist, so that makes it okay." Second, there is the boomerang sexism, where we see men fighting back against their domestication and emasculation. Here are some examples of each:

WINKING SEXISM

In 2003, Miller Lite debuted an ad with two busty women having a cat-fight in a fountain. The spot acknowledged its own ridiculousness by revealing that the whole fight had been imagined by two guys talking in a bar, while their girlfriends looked on in disgust. Implication: Yes, this ad is sexist, but we filmed two women reacting to its sexism, because we're so entirely aware that it's sexist, thereby sidestepping any explicit charge of sexism. Ta-da!



In a Bug Light ad, two young men sneak into a yoga class to ogle at women in spandex before the instructor calls them out. Implication: Yes, objectifying women in spandex might seem sexist, but the instructor's castigating glare represents our moral awareness that these guys are wrong to ogle, even though sneaking in to yoga classes to spy on women is, let's all admit, a real hoot!



BOOMERANG SEXISM

Today, the best example of the boomerang trend might be the new Miller Lite campaign that mocks men for not acting sufficiently manly, or for mimicking women. Naturally, the panacea to this sort of creeping feminization of manhood is crack open an ice-cold Miller Lite.



In a much-discussed 2010 Super Bowl commercial, "Man's Last Stand," a sequence of sullen men stare forward with a voice-over announcing their various submissions to married life -- "I will listen to your friends' opinion of my friends; I will carry your lip balm." Because of these small domestic tortures, the voice concludes, men should act like men and drive the car they want to drive. Implication: Adult relationships are an eternal parade of emasculation. Thank heavens for cars.



The 2010 Super Bowl was a bonfire of gender-charged, and borderline sexist, advertisements, like the Dockers' "It's Time to Wear the Pants" campaign and a Dove spot that similarly acted as if consumer products were the saving grace for men burdened by their wives' expectations. But this was the most explicit boomerang against women gaining the upper hand in relationships: a Flo-TV ad that mocked a boyfriend shopping on a football Sunday. Implication: Adult relationships are an eternal parade of emasculation. Thanks heavens for small TVs.









