Stereotypes: HaHa or Hurtful?

If you watch television at all you have undoubtedly realized that advertisers and media buyers have product placement down to a science. Shows geared toward a male or female audience tend to feature commercials selling products that are specific for each respective gender.
If you’re a man and you watch Monday Night Football or anything on Spike, you’ve probably seen countless beer commercials for Budweiser or Miller Lite. If its instant animal attraction and a guaranteed one night stand you seek, then by now you know that Axe body spray is the product for you. Perhaps you’ve added a few extra pounds over the years and need to shed them quickly so you can squeeze back into that banana hammock you wore back in the 80‘s. If so, there are countless fat burning products as well as exercise gimmicks promising overnight six pack abs.
For the women tuning into to Oprah and Grey’s Anatomy, you’re well versed on the benefits of Tampax Pearl, winged maxis or Secret deodorant, which is strong enough for a man, but made for a woman. Women’s programming is also more likely to advertise some Nicholas Sparks tearjerker or Julia Roberts romcom than Transporter 3 or the most recent reboot of Friday the 13th. For the seniors tuning into the Hallmark channel or some Dick Van Dyke movie of the week, surely you know that AARP offers you specialized car insurance and that Wilford Brimley pronounces diabetes, “diabetus.”
But for as each commercial that is well placed and reaches it’s target audience, there is another that is born of some antiquated stereotype. Why are baby diapers and household cleaning products still advertised primarily during women’s programming? Same for men’s programming with power tools and motor oil. As I sat watching The Ultimate Fighter last Wednesday night it became painfully obvious that advertisers believe that only video gaming couch potatoes watch Spike at ten o’clock at night. One hour long broadcast featured ads for Gears of War, Call to Duty on top of numerous other wrestling and street racing games.
Watch TV during the day and you will see numerous ads for commuter colleges like Education America and ITT Tech. Apparently, if you are lazy enough to be watching television on a Wednesday afternoon in stead of working, you are too lazy to attend a four year school and get a career instead of just a job. Daytime programming is also filled with ads for check cashing services and work from home scams. Advertising executives must really think that people at home during the week are losers.
I’ve always believed that stereotypes were somewhat based in reality. If you pull up to a Camaro or Trans Am at a stoplight and there is some 80s heavy metal song blaring from the speakers, the driver is most likely a white male. Hell, its probably me. If you go to a Cher concert and see a bunch of men who aren’t being dragged along by their noses by their wives, they are probably gay. Finally, if you’re at the movie theater watching a horror flick and there is a woman screaming at the top of her lungs whenever something even remotely creepy happens, its probably a black woman. Sorry, its all true. Don’t shoot the messenger.
Stereotypes, although funny sometimes, can be offensive too. Why are cleaning products advertised to women or power tools to men? I actually do quite a bit of cleaning and laundry around the house and Tina is the Mrs. Fixit of the family. Does watching sports make me obligated to sit around and play video games? I don’t even own a gaming system. If I’m not mistaken, Logo is the name of the network for gay people. Would they be offended if pharmaceutical companies were advertising an AIDS prevention pill or Birkenstocks? I imagine so. What if every other add on BET were for a bail bondsman or overnight paternity tests? That would be highly offensive.
I guess my point is that advertisers should be careful when painting their target market with the same brush. Do women still do most of the cleaning around the house? I don’t know but my guess would be yes. Maybe it isn’t even that they do the cleaning though. Perhaps the commercials are aimed at them because they do most of the shopping. Who knows.
Either way, as fun as playing with stereotypes can be, it can be equally as offensive.

I'm Sick and it Sucks!

I’ve taken a few days off from posting, not for lack of something to say, but because I’ve comedown with a mild cold/flu. It started on Sunday when I just felt fatigued all day. I thought nothing of it since that is usually how I feel on days after tailgating. On Monday it was worse, no symptoms, just fatigue. When I woke up Tuesday morning though my throat was sore and my head hurt, crap. It has gotten progressively worse ever since and today I feel like microwave poo. Surprisingly I was able to drag myself to school yesterday.
I’ve got an idea for a blog entry in my head but I can’t put it down in comprehendible form with my head so stuffy. You see, my process for blogging relies on many external factors. Daily experiences and interactions make up most of my ideas. I tried to go down the political road but it just wasn’t natural for me and I felt that I was being dishonest to not only myself, but to those of you who take the time to read my musings. If you are going to show me the honor of taking the time to read my blog, the least I can do is be honest.
So with that said, I ask you to be patient with me. Hopefully I will start feeling better here soon without having to go to the doctor. I’ve got entries on stereotypes and Thanksgiving in the works as well as whatever else may pop into my mentholated brain over the next few days. Have a nice weekend.

Toilet Bowl Promises

As I sat in the stands of FIU Stadium this past Saturday watching the Golden Panthers rally past Arkansas State, my head screamed at me for not keeping myself properly hydrated while tailgating all afternoon. It reminded me of all the nights I’ve spent hugging the toilet, cursing myself and promising God and anyone else who might be tuning in that I would never drink again.
You see, I approach college football tailgating with a vigor unlike anything else. The Xterra gets packed on Friday night and Tina and I spend most of the evening in the kitchen preparing Saturday’s feast. Usually I make my own special variety of wings in three flavors--hot, hot w/minced garlic, and extra hot--and Tina makes something fancy and healthy. For Arkansas State she made some turkey bacon club wraps and festive bean dip while I took the week off from making wings and just brought hotdogs. Of course, what tailgate would be complete without a cooler full of beer?
At my age, I’ve learned to become a smarter drinker, not only for the sake of others around me, but for my own sake as well. As I down beer after beer, I mix in a bottle of water here and there. Usually, I try to keep the ratio at a 3 beers to 1 bottle of water minimum. This not only prevents me from getting embarrassingly drunk, but it also helps to quell any potential hangover. Unfortunately, this past Saturday I forgot to keep up with the water intake.
I was fine up until halftime. Tina, our friends and I were in the student section chanting, cheering, romping and stomping. We went crazy when Paul McCall connected with T.Y. for an 84 yard catch and run play and booed when ASU scored. After the half was an entirely different story. Seeing that we’re all a bit older than the average student, we decided the atmosphere in the student section was a bit too frenzied for our taste and relocated to the visitors seating. Apparently, someone forgot to tell the ASU faithful that there was a game.
That was when the exhaustion set in. I suddenly felt like I had gone a week without sleep. My head started hurting and my legs were nowhere to be found. It wasn’t an early onset hangover, this was different. I chased down a soda vendor like he owed me money and bought a Powerade. After gulping that down I felt better, briefly. A good game was being played between two teams fighting for third place in the conference and a potential bowl game and all I could do was stare at my feet: my eyes couldn’t take the lights. I didn’t miss the wide receiver end around-fumble-option-pass to end the game, though.
I felt so bad that I couldn’t help but think back to the night that some friends and I did eight shots of Jagermeister, each. That night cost me about two days worth of toilet bowl promises, including a promise to never do Jager shots again, a promise I have kept to this day. Tina dragged me to a friend of hers divorce party once, and I proceeded to drink margaritas like a fish drinks water. There were many promises made that night, too. For my 34th birthday, when it seemed like everyone inside Buffalo Wild Wings bought me a shot, I promised myself that I would never tell my boss that I would come in on my day off again, especially when that day off falls on the day after my birthday.
Saturday night wasn’t nearly as bad as any of those times. The way I felt was caused more by exhaustion and dehydration than it was excess alcohol intake. When we made it back to the parking lot following the game I was able to down a few bottles of water and I felt better almost instantly. Although the exhaustion was still there, the headache went away once I got some H2O in me. Unfortunately I found that someone had stolen our mini-grill. There were no toilet bowl promises to be made that night though, only celebration of another Golden Panther victory, the fourth of the season so far. Not bad for a team projected as the worst in the country at the start of the season.

Quality Programming

Has there ever been a better family show than Friday Night Lights? By family show I don’t mean a show that has a happy, positive message every time and where the kids in the show always make the right decision and say “yes, sir,” and “no, ma’am” all the time. Those are unrealistic if you ask me. A family show in my mind should offer something for everyone in the family and should be somewhat based in the real world.
FNL is all of those things. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the show follows the Taylor family, made up of Eric, Tammy and Julie. Eric is the father/husband and coach of the local high school football team in a football crazy town. Tammy is the mother/wife who happens to be the principal at the high school at which her husband coaches. As you can imagine, this causes some friction. Julie is the daughter who is also a student at the high school at which her dad is the coach and mom is the principal.
Tina and I both grew up watching shows like Little House on the Prairie and Highway to Heaven. She even still likes to watch 7th Heaven. Those are all great shows will valuable lessons in making the right decisions, being nice to everybody, the power of prayer, etc. But they aren’t very realistic, in my opinion. In those shows, everything always works out in the end. Little Suzy gets healed of her mystery illness, mommy and daddy work through their problems and a mysterious stranger who turns out to be a personification of God shows up with the answer for any other issue. In the real world, every cloud does not have a silver lining.
FNL has its feet on the ground when it comes to the issues facing families today. The kids drink at their parties, have sex without the good little angel that looks a lot like Dad standing on their shoulder telling them they shouldn’t be doing it and get into all kinds of other trouble. When Buddy Garrity, the slimy football booster who is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure the Panthers win, cheated on his wife with his secretary, there was no reconciliation, only divorce. In the shows very first episode Jason Street, the school’s all-world quarterback, was paralyzed making a tackle. There was no miracle cure for him. No Michael Landon, Della Reese or Roma Downey showing up with a magic tough or miracle cure.
Matt Saracen, the backup QB who was thrust into the spotlight following Street’s injury, has more on his plate then Laura Ingalls ever could have dealt with. His father is deployed in Iraq and he has an absentee mother. While holding down a job at Tasty Freeze (television’s equivalent to Dairy Queen), managing his studies and leading his team to state, he also tends to his grandmother. He has to deal with her as she goes through the early stages of Alzheimer’s. This entails consistent bickering with the insurance company over in-home care and medication costs as well as making sure she doesn’t burn the house down or wander of in the middle of the night.
Without rehashing the entire series, let me just say that if Tina and I had kids, especially teenagers, this is the show we would want them to watch on a family night, if such things even exist anymore. It truly does offer something for everyone. For the boys, there is not only the fact that the show is written around football, but the girls in the show are all gorgeous. There is also a lot of mushy teenage relationship drama for the girls, as well as some cute boys, or so Tina says. For mom and dad, there some very realistic relationship tension between Tammy and Eric Taylor. They have to deal with money worries, juggling work and a newborn child, as well as worrying about their teenage daughter dating the team’s star QB.
On top of all that stuff, the stories do not always have a happy ending, much like life itself. I think it is important for a show that deals with the issues that FNL does to show that they don’t always end with a puppy dog and cotton candy result. I encourage anyone in search of a good family program to check out Friday Night Lights. The only problem is you may have to search for it. It has fallen victim to NBC’s time slot shuffle. Its first season it was on Tuesday nights, last season it was moved to Fridays, and this season it has been moved to Wednesdays on the Direct TV channel where it will remain until January, when it will return to NBC. Check it out.

I Hear a Memory

Today’s post was sent to me through some act of fate. As I was driving to school today, the cheesy morning radio show I was listening to announced celebrity birthdays and among them was The Karate Kid himself, Ralph Macchio. Shortly after that I grew weary of the same old talk show shtick and began channeling surfing. A few scans down that proverbial dial I caught Bananarama’s hit ditty, Cruel Summer, which happened to be featured in TKK. Fate had sent me an idea.




Upon hearing the first few musical notes my mind wandered back to the summer of 84, which would have been the summer between 7th and 8th grade for me. I spent that summer hanging out at Lake Worth beach with my childhood best friend Danny, each of us trying to accumulate as many girls’ phone numbers as we could. That got me thinking about other songs from movies of that era, songs like Danger Zone from Top Gun and Glory of Love from Karate Kid Part II. Both of those movies came out in the summer of 86, when I was in New York. That was a great summer vacation. I met some great friends that summer: friends who I would keep in touch with for years. I even had my first true summer fling in the summer of 86, Lisa was her name and she was the first girl I ever French kissed.



My point is that scientists would tell you that scent is the sense that is most closely tied to memories. I beg to differ. Nothing takes me back in time like music. When I get a whiff of a familiar scent it often grabs my attention but rarely do I recall exactly where I know the scent from. A familiar song, on the other hand, takes me directly to a place or moment in time, especially when I can associate that song with something visual, like a movie.
One of the songs I have as a ring tone on my phone is Moving in Stereo by The Cars. Any guys reading this post are probably cracking a devilish smile on their faces right now. The bass line for that song immediately brings to mind the famous Phoebe Cates bikini scene from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Yummy. I remember being in 6th grade when that movie came out. Every guy, including me, was wearing checkerboard Vans and saying, “Hey bud, let’s party!”



Music, not smell, is the gas that fuels my time machine as it drives down memory lane. How far I go depends on the CD I choose to slide into the player. So happy birthday Ralph Macchio! Thanks for guiding today’s tour through the summer of 84. You’re the best!

Time is of the Essence

One of the major differences I have noticed between my generation and the younger generation of the students that surround me not only at school but in jobs I’ve had in the past is a lack of respect for rules and/or authority. Accompanying this lack of respect is also a lack of personal accountability. There is a tendency among a portion of today’s youth to point fingers and deflect blame. It is similar to today’s athletes. They can’t wait to pound their chests and dance when they do the simplest of things but when they mess up, it’s because of a referee or a blown assignment by a teammate, etc..
I don’t need to continue to rehash my work experience but just to remind you, my previous college degree is in Marketing Management and my work experience lies primarily in various levels of retail, from a mere sales associate up to low level management. It is because of my experiences in retail that I have decided to drop everything and return to school. Because of the night and weekend hours, retail jobs are perfect for a college student needing extra cash flow and over the years I’ve worked with hundreds of them. Some of them have been hardworking and punctual. Most though, were lazy and unreliable.
I bring this topic up because my beloved Working Girls( http://www.work-girl.blogspot.com/ )had a post on their blog last week in which one of their bosses had decided to suddenly start enforcing attendance and punctuality policies and went about it by standing at the elevator with a stopwatch greeting employees. Although I applaud the decision to enforce punctuality, after all, if they can’t trust you to do something as simple as look at a clock and be on time, how can they trust you with difficult tasks, their methods leave a lot to be desired. You can’t be lax on policy day after day, week after week and month after month then suddenly crack the whip overnight. Especially by doing something as childish as waiting by the door with a watch.
Some of the responses that Working Girl received were shocking to me, especially considering that they were coming from adults in the professional world. A few people stated that, as long as you are doing your job, no one should care if you arrive late or leave early. To those people I offer this response, getting to work on time and completing your work day IS part of your job. If you are not doing so, guess what? You are not doing your job. Another responder asked why they should have to be on their boss’ schedule. Why? Because they are THE BOSS! That’s why. You do what they say, not the other way around.
There just seems to be this sense of entitlement with today’s youth. The same people that can’t be on time, leave early or call in sick are the same ones who threaten to quit when they are reviewed and don’t get a raise. I used to work with a kid working his way through college who would do a very minimal amount of work and when he was prodded to do more he would say something to the effect that he only got paid $8 per hour so he only did what he felt was $8 worth of work per hour. If the company wanted more work out of him, they should give him a raise. That was the mentality that many of his peers shared. They were waiting for the company to give them raises rather than earning them. I’m sure you are familiar with the saying, dress for the job you want, not the job you have. Well, that could easily be changed to, work for the wage you want, not the wage you have.
To that same effect, many of the working students that could never be on time or called in sick for every home football game or college night at the club were the same ones asking for more hours during school breaks. It just made me shake my head. A few more of my personal favorites were the people who were already late that would enter the building with breakfast, lunch or dinner, clock in and then proceed to the break room and eat while on the clock. I’m also rather fond of the women who arrive at work late and get to their desks and begin putting on their makeup. Makeup is as much a part of getting dressed as putting on socks and shoes: it should be done at home, on your time, not on our dime.
The biggest frustration was that, for many of these companies, the cost of hiring and training employees is too high to justify the termination of slackers like this. As easy as it is to find another student willing to work for low wages, consistently turning them over and training a new crop isn't cost effective so the companies put up with it and delegate the work to other, more reliable workers which, in a sense, punishes those people for being good workers. That is what drove me way. From the perspective of a sales associate, it was frustrating to have to pick up the slack of these people. I came to work on time and did my job well, why should I have had to do their jobs too? From the view of a manager it was an ongoing battle to try and have a reliable staff yet have to fight tooth and nail with Human Resources to terminate worthless individuals. Surely the negative impact they have on productivity offsets the cost of training replacements.
I don’t know where the blame lies. Whether it’s a parenting thing or because of the fact that everything is an excuse nowadays. There is a disorder and subsequent narcotic for every damn thing in the world today. If a kid daydreams he’s ADD and if he fidgets while he daydreams he’s ADHD and written a scrip for mind numbing drugs and given a free pass the rest of his life. In my day the kid was just a daydreamer who drank too much Kool-Aid and needed to come down from his sugar high.
What scares me the most about this trend is that I always thought that kids grew out of it once they entered the professional world. College kids are supposed to be flaky and uninterested, it’s part of the whole experience. But when I saw the responses over at Working Girl I realized that it may not just be a college thing, its quite possibly an epidemic.