While it is clear to me (and I am sure you) that my readership is predominantly female, I certainly do know that there are men who read my blog, are fans on facebook and even leave comments. Thankyou!
It is often presumed that body image issues and even marketing strategies that prey on our self esteem are only targeted at girls and women. That is certainly not the case, as this ad for the hair dye ‘Just For Men’ which I saw for the first time yesterday on my tv screen, clearly shows. Watch to see what I mean.
I find this ad so stereotyping and offensive on a number of different levels.
Firstly, for the man in question, it makes the assumption that due to the fact he has greying hair this means he is incapable of getting a date or having a social life. It’s superficial to the extreme and I am sure there are many men with grey or greying hair that have very active love and social lives. My husband is one of them. George Clooney would be another!
To make matters worse, the company engages girls no older than 7-10 years (at my guess) to feed into this image obsession, being the ones who plead with their Dad to makeover his hair. It’s clear they think this is entirely necessary for him to be attractive to another woman, later on squealing with delight when they receive an sms’ed photo on their mobile phone showing Dad out on a date with an attractive woman. Manipulation complete. Talk about feeding into the generalisation that girls and women are only interested in superficial, appearance based issues – this is a perfect example.
My take is that if you are a greying man and wish to colour your hair because you want to do it – cool – go right ahead. Please ensure though that you don’t do it because ‘Just For Men’ scares you into thinking you’ll never get a date or your daughter will think you are hideous. Those sort of feelings only arise because of negative self esteem based marketing attempting to tell you you are not ok and you must buy hair dye to ‘fix’ yourself. You are ok – absolutely ok – and then some.