Dockers: only men are adults

[JaChelle Sugar]

The Rebelution website (of the Modesty Survey fame) has published a pic from some Dockers campaign to sell more pants to fundy/sexist men. therebelution.com/blog/2009/12/dockers-man-ifesto-tells-men-to-be-men-again/

According to Dockers, apparently only men are adults, male is the only gender, only men can be heroes or make positive change in the world, and the company is uninterested in the money of half the population.

Text of the ad reads: Once upon a time, men wore the pants, and wore them well. Women rarely had to open doors, and little old ladies never crossed the street alone. Men took charge because that's what they did. But somewhere along the way, the world decided it no longer needed men. Disco by disco, latte by foamy non-fat latte, men were stripped of their khakis and left stranded on the road between boyhood and androgyny. But today, there are questions our genderless society has no answers for. The world sits idly by as cities crumble. Children misbehave and those little old ladies remain on one side of the street. For the first time since bad guys, we need heroes. We need grown-ups. We need men to put down the plastic fork, step away from the salad bar and untie the world from the tracks of complacency. It's time to get your hands dirty. It's time to answer the call of manhood. It's time to wear the pants.

No wonder the fundies love Docker's so much if this is the kind of sexist bullshit the company puts out.

[Rebelwife]

:angry-screaming: (No words necessary, I think.)

[Caribou]

I will make sure my husband never wears Dockers again.

Speaking as someone (who lacks a penis) who buys the majority of her husband's clothes for him.

[salex]

The Rebelution website (of the Modesty Survey fame) has published a pic from some Dockers campaign to sell more pants to fundy/sexist men. therebelution.com/blog/2009/12/dockers-man-ifesto-tells-men-to-be-men-again/

According to Dockers, apparently only men are adults, male is the only gender, only men can be heroes or make positive change in the world, and the company is uninterested in the money of half the population.

Text of the ad reads: Once upon a time, men wore the pants, and wore them well. Women rarely had to open doors, and little old ladies never crossed the street alone. Men took charge because that's what they did. But somewhere along the way, the world decided it no longer needed men. Disco by disco, latte by foamy non-fat latte, men were stripped of their khakis and left stranded on the road between boyhood and androgyny. But today, there are questions our genderless society has no answers for. The world sits idly by as cities crumble. Children misbehave and those little old ladies remain on one side of the street. For the first time since bad guys, we need heroes. We need grown-ups. We need men to put down the plastic fork, step away from the salad bar and untie the world from the tracks of complacency. It's time to get your hands dirty. It's time to answer the call of manhood. It's time to wear the pants.

No wonder the fundies love Docker's so much if this is the kind of sexist bullshit the company puts out.

That ad was, I believe, considered a fail.

adweek.com/adfreak/dockers-man-ifesto-gets-kick-pants-13254

They are trying to get the "alpha' male thing with a new branding, rcently, because, lets face it... dockers image is aging and chubby highschool history teachers or desk jockeys in a cubicle. us.dockers.com/home/index.jsp?camp=DRSearch goes to their more recent ads.

[LainieR]

:wtf:

Well that's the end of me buying anything dockers for my husband. :angry-banghead:

[Trynn]

Wait... Why are salad and foamy lattes not masculine enough for these people? A salad is at least healthy. There's nothing particularly feminine about either one of these things.

[mamallama]

Methinks that strategy would work better for wrangler.

[docmom]

I think I just bought my last pair of Levi's ever

[Dysfundamental]

A terrible misogynist ad campaign from five years ago is not high on my list of things to get outraged about. Dockers has been doing horrendously for years, so presumably they reaped the consequences of their idiocy already.

[FJismyheadship]

Well that's odd. I have two pairs of Dockers jeans that are clearly women's work jeans.

But I bought them at a thrift store. Is that okay or is that still supporting them somehow?

[DGayle]

Meh. When Dockers starts putting money into oppressing women by fighting the right to birth control, or tossing cash at anti-gay campaigns, let me know. In the meantime, it's just an attempt at advertising. We've got our "strong enough for a man, made for a woman" deodorant and flower-embossed pastel razors, and that's advertising too. Who stopped using Bic pens over the Bic For Her campaign? It's a case of if you don't like the advertising, don't buy it, but don't get worked up. Save the anger-energy for Hobby Lobby.

On another note, are those Rebellution wieners even courting? Surely woman-blamers like them are catches in the fundy world.

[Peas n carrots]

Thoughts that came to mind (granting this is a fairly dated ad campaign)

1) Who is going to read that wall o' text? Most ad campaigns try to keep it short and sweet...people don't have the time to read a paragraph about a product.

2) I don't get why it's up to men to have to open doors and make sure old women cross the street. Shouldn't we all try to be helpful to anyone regardless of age or gender?

[debrand]

If Dockers wants their brand to appeal to young men why not simply show young men wearing the pants? Most young men don't want to go back to the days of Ricky Ricardo yelling at Lucy to stay home like she was a little kid. My guess is that they had no women on the advertising campaign-or at least I hope not.

Whoops. A woman did work on the campaign. Yeah, let's go back to segregation and the glass ceiling because women had doors opened for them. Actually, people open doors for me and I open doors for them. I am glad that this campaign failed because it means that most people didn't buy it and that is a step forward, I hope.

Brandweek, Jennifer Sey, Dockers’ vice president of global marketing, said that “sensitivity, chivalry, ambition and decisiveness†are the traits they wish to highlight.

[Cleopatra7]

Does "Rebelution" have any purpose besides slut-shaming and promoting general misogyny?

[DGayle]

Does "Rebelution" have any purpose besides slut-shaming and promoting general misogyny?

Running polls and puffing themselves up.

[debrand]

They are both married and one is in school.

The idea behind their site could be a good one. The problem is that because of their father, I always feel that they have more ominous purpose. Of course, the twins could have become more enlightened then their dad but if so, I would think that they would denounce that Modesty Poll which made it seem like just being a woman and breathing will cause a man to get an erection.

They also had an article on Malala Yousafazai, who is not a Christian; however, the commenters beneath the article expressed sadness that she wasn't a Christian. Someone did ask why the Harris twins have so many people who are not Rebelutionaries on their site and why the Harris twins themselves aren't doing anything particularly glorious. (worded differently)

[DGayle]

Yeah, if only Malala was the brand of Christian you know those commenters mean. Then she would have stayed home like a good little girl and not gotten shot in the head. Proof fundies have it right....

I feel sick even typing that, but you know that's how they see it. There was some school shooting and Zsu wrote on her blog about how her kids are safe from shootings because she loves them enough to keep them home. It hinted at how the kids who were shot were only shot because they weren't loved.

I think the Harris twins, who I can't even picture in relationships, got so much attention for that poll that really said a woman wearing a crossbody purse strap is "distracting" to men and that our regular clothes that aren't low cut or slit up to there make men unable to control themselves, so it's our fault. That was earlier in home internet, so there wasn't so much online competition, so they were chauvinist assholes at the right/wrong time.

[JaChelle Sugar]

Running polls and puffing themselves up.

ANd writing article after article about how adolesence is a modern invention and children can and should grow straight from childhood to adulthood.

[DGayle]

ANd writing article after article about how adolesence is a modern invention and children can and should grow straight from childhood to adulthood.

I worry about the people who think kids should become adults as soon as puberty starts. Do they really want to make their daughters be child brides? Are they wishing they could marry children?