While watching football throughout the day, I noticed a certain trend in Miller Lite commercials. They have built recent advertisements around the position that drinking their beer is the masculine thing to do, which is why most of the actors in the commercials are males. In this particular video, a man is drinking a light beer other than Miller Lite and two other men are joking that it is not the only "un-manly" thing he had done that day. It proceeds to show the man drinking the other brand of beer crying because he will miss his girlfriend. In our society, we have socially constructed crying to be a woman's characteristic (which is why I believe I even started laughing when I saw this scene). When the commercial goes back to the three men, they are now all holding a Miller Lite and laughing about the entire crying situation. By doing this, the advertisement closes off with once again hinting why Miller Lite is manly.
I also noticed that these commercials were being played during the football games, where it is fair to argue that it's more common for a man to be watching. This appeals to men by suggesting their identity can become more masculine by drinking their product.
I've seen some of the Miller Light commercials with the "un-manly" motif. After reading your post I thought about alcohol as a cultural symbol. I think it's strongly implied that in American society that the consumption of alcohol makes a guy more manly. I may be mistaken but in all of the beer commercials I've seen, the focus is always the men who are drinking the beer. Generally an attractive woman or women serve them the beer - a secondary affirmation of their manliness perhaps.
ReplyDeleteI personally think that light beer tastes terrible. However, after reading your post, maybe it's more important that it makes me more of a man? See you at the next kegger. . .
I agree with what you said in this post. Whenever men are drinking alcohol there is always judgement placed on what type of alcohol or type of drink that someone is drinking. If a man orders a cosmopolitan he might be ridiculed or it might fit in with his particular crowd. There is always the feeling that drinking something like whiskey straight is much more of a man thing to do than drinking some sort of cocktail, and as is always the case with alcohol, the amount of alcohol that one can drink is always associated by how tough they are. The latter is always stupid in my opinion because it is mostly based on genetics, there are some people that have never drank that could drink me under the table, and the same goes for me against other people with different genes, it is all about how your body processes the alcohol.
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