W.A.M.

The ABC's of a white american male.

A: Let's go smoke 5...
B: Hundred....
A: Thousand....
C: Million....
A: A million cigarettes?
B: That's not possible.
C: and 5 hundred thousand cigarettes is?
B: well, it's more possible.
A: Yeah, it's like, twice as possible
B: (laughing) Hah I know!
A: uh yeah, math major over here.
B: woaa, yeah I forgot.
C: you should be proud.
A: I mean, I pat myself on the back at least daily.
B: yeah, I can imagine.

And even in contemporary advertising there is still an impulse to use masculinity as a brand. One recent ad campaign for Dockers khakis 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." [[1]

(http://www.us.dockers.com/season/landing.aspx) ].

Aside from being offensive to women and gay men, the ad reads like a pathetic cry of a brand of masculinity that is rapidly dying out. The Dockers ad, while all together nasty, overgeneralized, and in poor taste, does contain a grain of truth in its statements on the “genderless society” we live in and that the new type of male is “stranded on the road between boyhood and androgyny”. The lessening of “men have to be men” attitudes is indeed an increasingly accepted facet of our society than in previous decades.