For the love of football, gals get manly TV ads

By Jackie Papandrew Comments 0
Published: October 8, 2009

Suppose, for the sake of discussion, you are an average middle-age woman with the everyday concerns typical of your kind, concerns such as spreading cellulite, a shrinking bank account and the possibility you will be the soggy, middle-of-the-night victim of a toilet seat that was left in an upright position.

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It wasn’t that long ago that football commercials pushed only two products: beer and pickup trucks.

And say that, like any average middle-age American woman, you love football. (Please insert a pan under this column to catch dripping sarcasm before it makes a mess.)

If you are such a woman, you undoubtedly are spending your fall weekends in front of the television, watching enough football (from Friday night all the way through Monday night) to make even Hank Williams Jr. and his rowdy friends a little sick of the sport. Because I am such a woman (except I don’t have even a smidgen of cellulite), that’s what I’ve been doing with my weekends lately. Actually, having been an average middle-age woman for some time now (except, let me remind you, I have no cellulite), I’ve spent several years wallowing each autumn in every minute of televised football I can get my eyes on. (Time to change the pan.)

And I’ve noticed something. The commercials are going coed. That’s right, average middle-age woman: The advertisers are targeting you.

It wasn’t that long ago that football commercials pushed only two products: beer and pickup trucks. You’d have several minutes of football, during which very large, very manly men wearing lots of padding would run around chasing a ball while thousands of screaming people encouraged them to rip each other to shreds. Then, the TV would cut to a commercial for a pickup, and you’d watch very large, very manly men drive very large, very manly pickups, which protected them so well they did not need padding.

You’d watch another commercial where very manly men (even the ones who weren’t so large) drink beer and stand around doing things only men who drink that particular brand of beer can do, such as grill burgers or leer at women in bikinis or scratch themselves in public.

Next, for a change of pace, you’d have several more pickup commercials, followed by more beer commercials. By then, you — the average middle-age woman — were starting to feel left out.

But all that has changed. Just last weekend, during my Friday-to-Monday football fest, I was thrilled to find the auto commercials pushing not-so-manly features such as fuel efficiency and family friendliness. The beer commercials touted drinkability and a reduction in calories. I counted a gourmet coffee commercial as well as one pushing sandwiches with organic roasted vegetables and one for a credit card featuring people buying theater tickets. Women and children ran amuck on the TV. And the only men to be seen were older and much smaller men who looked thrilled to be offered medicine to lower their cholesterol and conquer those enlarging prostates.

Football would appear to be going, if not feminine, at least a bit metrosexual.

Soon, no doubt, there will be halftime commercials promising to wipe away cellulite. Not that I’ll need it.

Syndicated columnist Jackie Papandrew is a Bartlesville native and a University of Oklahoma graduate. Visit her Web site at http://jackiepapandrew.com.