It’s official! Old fashioned sexism is finally back in style!

In a long post in which I was trying to be serious, I discussed (again) Kay Hymowitz’s Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys.

During the several discussions […] I kept seeing references to male slobs:

“why men don’t marry, why college women get guys showing up in a dirty t-shirt, the decline of male space and all the male bashing.”

This whole guys showing-up-for-dates-in-dirty-t-shirts complaint (voiced in a video segment shown here by young women) is undeniably true. I have seen it firsthand. I noticed it on a local Philadelphia cruise a couple of years ago; the girls were well dressed, while almost to a man, their dates looked like total slobs. Almost as if that was the sort of thing to be expected…

Well, an ad I saw yesterday made me think that it has become precisely the sort of thing to be expected.

Here’s the advertisement (for Gannett Newspapers) in yesterday’s Detroit Free Press:

BoyUp.jpg

Talk about stealing ideas! The above could easily be a cover for Kay Hymowitz’s book. How dare Gannett do such a thing?

I don’t know what to say. Should I try be serious? I mean, clearly there is a huge cognitive disconnect going on here.

What Hymowitz criticizes, Gannett advertises!

I have to remind myself that this is not satire. Sometimes I also have to remind myself that we are all living in the same country. There are so many issues where people are not even on the same page that it makes my head spin.

I’m old enough to remember the old sexist days when such ads tended to depict only well-dressed businessmen. Then times changed, and during the now-outmoded “equal rights” period the ads showed well-dressed businessmen and well-dressed businesswomen. And now it’s well-dressed businesswomen and slobbish boy men on skateboards. Does this mean things have come full circle? Will men now have to demand that they be hired too? That they be allowed to penetrate the new glass ceilings and seek admittance to private women’s clubs where powerful female cronies get together to decide on the future of the world in smoke-free rooms and tell the presidents where and when to launch wars? 

I guess the old sexist days are back. True, the sexes have been changed, but at least sexism has been restored.

How retro reverse!

With any luck, it may soon be possible to land a job as a “boy Friday.”


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2 responses to “It’s official! Old fashioned sexism is finally back in style!”

  1. Veeshir Avatar

    I blame light beer commercials and Sportscenter.

  2. […] am again reminded of the slacker guy on the skateboard juxtaposed against the “power” […]