"Men, hey, they're stupid".
If the recent advertising trend would have it, I've just said enough to sell any product to the female of the species.
Case in point: Oven Pride's "so easy, a man can do it" day-time smasher; which is so odious that it prompted nearly 700 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority.
The advert features an egg-sucking matriarch who looks on with utter contempt as her husband revels in the fact that, with this handy new product, he is able to perform a simple domestic task without, for example, accidently gorging his eye out with a spoon.
It's just a tongue-in-cheek play on "natural gender differences", Oven Pride's parent company Homepride said. While ASA ruled that "the ad used mild humour to refer to traditional gender stereotypes" but "did not portray either gender in a way that stigmatised, humiliated or undermined them".
But who exactly are these "non-offensive" adverts targeting? For anyone able to relate to such an advert, I imagine it'd be enough to send them over the edge. Fatal ingestion of said oven cleaner would surely follow the realisation that you were watching a portrayal of what your life had become.
Men, bless them
But it doesn't stop with the obvious male-bashing messages. Lurpak butter's latest advert, in which a man makes a pigs-ear of pastry-baking - "to hell with the imperfections, be proud of your puffed-up pie" - carries the same "men, bless them," undertones. And remember Boots' winter cold remedies ad which ran something along the lines of "men can't deal with colds, it's up to us women to keep the show on the road"?
I'm not proclaiming that all men are puff pastry experts, or that they deal with colds like troopers. But, as fellow BitchBuzz writer Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein mentioned last month, cut them some slack. I'm sure there are just as many women who aren't on speaking-terms with, or don't even own, a rolling pin and who love a good wallow in the misery of the common cold. Men, women - they're all humans.
I'm offended. There, I said it. It's not post-feminist, it's not re-addressing the balance: it's sexist. If I was a man, I wouldn't be too happy about the way I was being portrayed - basically if I'm not a misogynistic idiot (WKD anyone), I'm a simpering one - and as a women I'm insulted that these base portrayals of supposed gender differences are targeted at me.
And with that, it's time for me to get back home to my inadequate and incapable man - I wonder what he's managed to destroy today?