Real men store garden hoses in their hair.

I know this is late. I started writing my blog post friday afternoon, then realized that I needed a new primary source because mine sucked. I found one… then got side-tracked like most of the time.  You know how it works, one thing led to another…

Anyways, this is my new primary source, the Gillette Odor Shield Bodywash ad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97b13MGbPN8

The ad starts off with man legs (the hair gives it away) and two bottles of body wash. One is a gray, dull looking bottle with a butterfly on it, which says simply, “Body wash for men.” Where as the other is sporting the label for Gillette Odor Shield Body Wash. The man then reaches for the generic bottle, looks at it, and puts it down. He then picks up the Gillette bottle and manly items begin falling from what I can assume is his body. These items include a football, shovel, garden hose, and dirty socks, describing the phenomenon as getting rid of man-sized odor.In this process, the competing brand of body wash was knocked over, while the Gillette bottle stayed upright.

After all the items are done falling, the commercial then changes scenes to where it introduces the commercial’s motto, “Wash like a man, feel like a man.”  This implies that if you use Gillette body wash, you will feel like a man. In addition to this, it also implies that the items that fall from the man are also included in “being a man” meaning that you have to do at least some of these things to be a man, which makes me think, “If women do these things as well, does that give them man-sized odor?” and, “What would fall from woman-sized odor?”  In this ad, a man’s “role” in the media is to do all of the stereotypical things a man does, yard work, handy man business, and football, which infers that a woman is not able to do these things because they are too weak or unable, perhaps.