male shoppers

Breazeale describes Equire Magazine’s efforts to create an identity for men as consumers, in the article “In Spite of Women.” When women began taking on jobs and earning a living for their family, male identities were changed. Esquire attempted to create a place for men in the markets of food, home décor, and liquor. Criticizing female approaches to these things gave men an incentive to do it their way, to buy the food for a satisfying meal, add comfortable furniture to their living room, or buy drinks for parties that will be enjoyed by their friends. Esquire included seductive pictures and drawings of women to their pages to maintain a heterosexual image of their male readers- they were wary of the shopping and decorating implying that the readers were gay.
I saw a commercial on t.v. this week of a man eating soup in the kitchen when his wife walks in (but the clip is not on youtube yet…). It came to mind while I was reading about consumerism and targeting male shoppers. In this case, the man in the commercial is eating Progresso soup and saying that it is so chunky and meaty – it’s manly! And his wife, the knowledgeable shopper, points out that it is actually only 1 point on Weight Watchers. He’s a little thrown off by this, but he insists again that it is a manly soup to be eating. The hope is, I suppose, that a man who sees this commercial will think about Progresso if he’s doing a little shopping in the grocery store, and he’ll think, “This is something I can buy, and it has meat and it’s not wimpy like Italian Wedding soup (for example)”. I think this was an attempt by the advertisers to reach out to men and encourage them to shop, instead of leaving that to their wives.