Where’s the Beef?

Trent Schwartz

The article’s claim that companies advertise towards men through displaying masculinity or putting down femininity is supported by sound evidence most of the time. There are a few examples in the article in which the evidence to support the claim makes the claim seem like a stretch. The article does make a very good point that the fact that advertising is primarily directed towards men is an example of what society is like, a majority things are made to cater to men’s needs. A common advertising technique that is used heavily in advertising is associating products with masculinity in order to appeal to men. This is seen in an ad for Hummer in which a man who is buying tofu is checking out at a grocery store next to a man buying meat. The man buying tofu starts to seem uncomfortable and sees an ad for Hummer SUV behind the cash registrar. The next scene cuts to the man buying tofu driving in to a Hummer dealership and buying a Hummer. The ad was intended to reflect the image of masculinity onto Hummers by using it in the commercial as something that is very masculine to balance out something feminine which in this case was the tofu. Because of certain foods being labeled to genders, meat is seen as masculine and tofu, along with other healthy foods, is seen as feminine in the commercial. The use of masculinity in commercials to influence consumers is used heavily in the fast-food industry because of these gender associations with certain food groups. These associations can be traced back to the times in which all humans were hunter-gatherers where the men were the hunters and women were the gatherers. As a result, men produced meat and women produced plant-based foods. Because fast-food companies use far more meat products than plant-based products(which tend to be healthier), they lean heavily on advertising in ways that make meat appealing to consumers. A great example of the use of making meat appealing is in a Burger King ad in which “A man inspires a crowd of men to march in the streets to reclaim their right to eat meat instead of ‘chick food'”(Freeman and Merskin 282). The “chick food” that is referenced in the ad refers to foods like vegetables which are far more healthy food options than items at a fast-food restaurant. In order to appeal to its male target audience, Burger King attempts to make healthier options like vegetables seem unappealing by associating them with femininity. For most males growing up in the United States, the worst things that a boy’s friend’s could call him is a girl and this ad plays to that. Most men do not want to seem feminine and fast-food companies use that to their advantage. In order to advertise as efficiently as possible, companies will make ads that appeal most to the group that primarily buys their products. In the case of fast-food, the companies know that a majority of their customers are men and in order to appeal to them as much as possible, they associate their products with masculinity and their competitors products with femininity.