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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Women. Don't expect any help on a Thursday.

Tryphena Absent

14:15 / 16.04.04

Hello the British! I expect quite a few of you have seen the advert that the title of this thread refers to and very possibly it makes you want to throw a chair at the TV as well! It's just calling for an angry thread to be started but weeks after I decided there needed to be one I'm still too raging mad to be coherent about it.

Nuts magazine (soon to recieve hate mail from yours truly I suspect) is clearly targetting the type of men who should not be allowed to reproduce. Is this a dastardley plan by feminists to track those men down? Alas I suspect not. If you think this advert is totally fucking sick than please make me feel better by insulting it with me.

Goodness Gracious Meme

14:25 / 16.04.04

oh god. it's vile. evil. pathetic.

and voiced by Jonny 'Bulldog' Vaugn.

argggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. we'll have to invent a hell annex, in fairness to the rest of the damned

14:32 / 16.04.04

No, but it's ironic, you see! Like Bernard Manning and the BNP. It actually empowers women. Typical birds, always missing the point.

Tryphena Absent

14:36 / 16.04.04

This thread is for insults. INSULTS. Forget the magazine, I'm going to throw a chair at your head! Arrggghhhh!

14:43 / 16.04.04

You throw like a girl.

I actually totally despise Nuts, and its various stinking ill-begotten brethren. The next stage will be magazines tailored exactly for the lizard brain, with no writing at all, just FuckKillCrisps. Which will be the title.
"Men, don't expect any help when your girlfriend pulls out your innards with a rusty hook."

14:44 / 16.04.04

Anna - I'd be happy to join you in insulting it. Thank god you posted this on friday though, because had it been yesterday....

15:01 / 16.04.04

*chants* Nuts to Nuts! Nuts to Nuts! Nuts to Nuts!

*crickets chirp*
...ho-kay then.

16:48 / 16.04.04

Mmm. Superdeluxeannoying.

'Snot really more offensive than many of the "Ha ha! Men are crap and useless!" type ads aimed at women though, is it?

17:18 / 16.04.04

so for those of us who havent seen it... wanna describe please?

17:42 / 16.04.04

Fucking blackhearted obscenity!

I thought some trend-making type people declared a few years ago that "laddism" was dying or something.. more like retreating to the back of our collective minds, sinking lower into the swamp, gaining strength and ruthlessness so that it can reemerge and smash it's way through all the barriers erected by such things as decency, intelligence, taste and mutual respect for one's fellow human beings..

It's a feeling akin to being really hungry, and knowing that you've got a really nice meal in the fridge, and going to get it out and finding that it's in the process of being eaten by giant, oozing slugs and..

..what was I talking about again? Oh, never mind..

Our Lady Has Left the Building

17:48 / 16.04.04

Was Nuts the magazine that the editor persuaded Mark Thomas to write for, because he said it was going to be post-lad and there wouldn't be stupid articles with girls getting their kit off like all the other mags, then after writing two columns Mark discovered that was exactly what the mag was going to be and promptly refused to write anything else?

18:01 / 16.04.04

No, I think that was Zoo, the other pile of shite like this.

I've actually read both - they were giving away free launch issues, and I will read anything (almost literally) in the magazine world. They're not even seemingly aimed at blokes, but teenage lads. At least Loaded* et al seemed to be aimed at people who had lived a bit and weren't just going to be impressed with a couple of pictures of Nell McAndrew in her scanties - and had some good writing in too, unlike these hunks of crap (and these mags are ruining Loaded, if you believe Private Eye.)

(*This is of course, back in the 'good old days of laddism')

Anything which uses the word 'norks' is not even fit for toilet paper, if you asks me...

Oh yes, and the advert is shit.

"Women. Don't worry about having to put up with a load of pleas for what will turn out to be supremely unsatisfying sex on Thursday, because your emotionally subliterate fella is having a tug over a picture of Kelly Brook as it's a lot less threatening than actually talking to you for diddums" obviously didn't make it past the brainstorming session.

19:56 / 16.04.04

Haven't read either Nuts or Zoo. Which one's heavier on the I-can't-believe-it's-not-homoeroticism male nipple-count front?

14:52 / 20.04.04

But 'norks' is a funny word! Maybe it's just me....

07:58 / 21.04.04

Mystery Gypt - essentially there are a few different short short adverts on tv, where there is a woman struggling to do something (eg open the lounge door carrying a cup of tea in each hand, or trying to mend a plug etc) and the man invariably not helping even though he easily could. "Why's he not helping her?" is the idea. Oh yes! because he's reading that superlative magazine which is not a shabby imitation of a genre which is a decade passed its sell by date. I must go and buy one.

The by-line is then voiced over by a rather enthusiastic smug sounding man saying "women! - don't expect any help on a thursday".

You're missing out. big time.

10:06 / 21.04.04

Does anyone think the whoke "lad" thing didn't really exist and was juxst another pointless catergory/generalisation created to sell Loaded?

17:59 / 21.04.04

I'm not upset that the women aren't receiving any help. What bothers me is that these women are shown in such a negative view. Any woman can actually do these tasks, but what you see is them failing at tasks that may require skills or traits not normally attributed to the female stereotype. They are depicted as frail and weak. But that’s what the magazine is about and that message is clearly conveyed in the advertisement.

21:22 / 21.04.04

Well, um, yes, quite. Hence our collective annoyance.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:52 / 21.04.04

They're advertising Cerebus on TV now?

Jack The Bodiless

11:25 / 22.04.04

Also annoyed by the whole misandry inherent in the "hey! men are weak-willed and rubbish, and it's them who never do the cleaning, make tea or other traditionally womanly chores."

Revolting perpetuation of anachronistic & evil stereotypes. Fume fume.

11:34 / 22.04.04

On the other hand... It has been quite acceptable for men to be portrayed as useless bastards around the house for quite some time now in advertising.

Both magazines are shite, mind.

11:35 / 22.04.04

Oh, Jack just said that.

Whisky Priestess

12:13 / 22.04.04

I foresee a counter-campaign run by Cosmo:

"Men! Don't expect any sex on a Thursday ... or ever again."

12:44 / 22.04.04

Or by PlayStation Gamer: "Knobs - don't expect any wanking on Thursdays".

Our Lady Has Left the Building

11:26 / 23.04.04

Although TV has suffered a lot from people thinking the empowerment of female characters meant that male characters often had to be depowered (although not TV I remember someone commenting that all the women in The Archers were incredibly succesful businesswomen who ran their own small businesses and were a successin all they did while the men were all feckless wimps who couldn't even paint a wall properly), adverts have always worked around stereotypes and stereotypical situations, because they're selling them on gags, which more often than not don't pioneer anything new.

These things don't seem too bad on their own but it's the cumulative effect of a lot of them at once that is the kicker.

And why does there seem to be one Scottish woman that does the voice overs for all the tampon adverts?

11:38 / 23.04.04

The latest version of this ad has a rather bored Vaughn saying "Nuts - grab yours" at the end of it.

Now that's comedy.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:27 / 23.04.04

Maybe it's because of the Nuts adverts
That I hate Johnny Vaughan so
I feel the need while riding on the Jubilee
To stab him repeatedly
In the FACE!

12:43 / 23.04.04

But... why?

Tryphena Absent

01:06 / 25.04.04

Also annoyed by the whole misandry inherent in the "hey! men are weak-willed and rubbish, and it's them who never do the cleaning, make tea or other traditionally womanly chores."

Give us some examples then... after all the Nuts advert is just the icing on the cake for adverts like this. The Flash guy wants to make cleaning more difficult for his wife by refusing to tell her about his product. Apparently we're disabled when we have our period unless we use Always/Tampax/Bodyform. Who the fuck Wonderbra are trying to sell to is completely beyond me but frankly all of these examples pale in comparison to that fucking Nuts advert. It's just disgusting, I seriously can't believe that thing's on TV when they took down that fantastic Sophie Dahl Opium billboard ad. The world is truly screwed.

01:45 / 25.04.04

Well, there's the bizarre soup of mixed messages in the Mr Muscle ads. I'm never very sure whether I'm supposed to think it's wimpy and pathetic for a man to clean one's house or merely pop a rib or two in helpless mirth at the fact that HE'S NOT VERY MUSCULAR AT ALL!!

Erm, except he actually is. In a 'sinewy' kinda way.

03:50 / 25.04.04

Who the fuck Wonderbra are trying to sell to is completely beyond me

you've honestly never met girls who would go for that? in a 'that'll get the men drooling' kinda way?

09:43 / 25.04.04

I'm really surprised by this - I mean the Nuts advert is terrible of course and there are loads of sexist adverts that make women look dumb, but I would actually say that recently they've been out-numbered by the amount of adverts about how men are really really stupid pathetic dick heads that let women down all the time and can't cook or clean or do anything useful and have small penises and are basically dumb pets.

Tryphena Absent

14:39 / 25.04.04

Give us examples then. It seems to me that the target of the stereotype is always going to pay more attention because they'll be offended so you'll notice adverts that stereotype men and I'll notice those that stereotype women. I don't think Mr. Muscle is targetted at a group in the same way that the Nuts advert is, if anything you can read it as 'women, if this puny little man can use this product than so can you because you are also weak'. Most of those cleaning ads offend everyone.

17:06 / 25.04.04

I was about to agree with Tom and reel off a big list, but I've just realised that trend seemed to die off a while back. They don't even show the Direct Line man-useless-crashes-cars ad any more, and that was tame compared to some.
Nothing recent springs to mind. Must try and remember what the real scream-at-the-screen anti men ads were from a few years ago.

18:50 / 25.04.04

I have to say, I think that gender typing of women is much worse in ad land than typing of men. Or maybe one is really just condusive to the other. Because if you're going to have a woman who cleans and cooks and shops and tries to satisfy men plus children if she is over 25 in every way, and that's the extent of her existence, then the man she's going to be trying to be please is necessarily going to be pretty limited.

This site is pretty interesting, but a bit limited:

http://www.genderads.com/

It's got a massive catalogue of example of gender typing in advertising, but is light on the analysis (one or two lines at most), and is put together like an AOL home page

Still, there it is...