Girl Power! Right? What a dickhead this guy was. I mean, who just comes out and says women are shitty drivers? * Doesn’t that make pleasant date conversation? Apparently, this guy was enough of an ass that this broad felt the need to go home and get her little stamp of approval to repair her ego.
From every direction, this commercial is condescending to everyone and that’s why I fucking hate it so much. And I hate the asswipes who came up with it. And I hate everyone who says, “Yeah! That’s right, gurl!” when they see it. (It’s possible no one is saying that.)
On a superficial level, this commercial shits on men. It plays up an old overplayed stereotype that all men think women are bad drivers and that we are all such assholes that we will tell them this the first chance we get. * And we will do it in a way that is non-jovial, disregarding her feelings. That’s condescending to men.
Now say this was the case and that this woman was offended enough by this man’s comments to go home, stew about it, and get supporting evidence (he clearly barely remembers making the comment). Is she so insecure that she cannot defend herself without some outside validation? Is she that weak of a woman? Is some corporation’s (represented by a man’s voice) pat on the head what she needs to get her point across? Pathetic display of girl power here. That’s condescending to women.
And maybe the guy wasn’t being an asshole by talking about male versus female drivers in their previous conversation. Maybe he was just trying to establish a little banter — you know, a little of the ol’ sexual-energy tennis match. So what if he’s not very good at it and had to resort to cheap tactics like using played out “controversial” topics like driving. She’s that big of bitch that she can’t take a joke? That’s condescending to women. Again.
This might be currently the worst running commercial on TV. I’ve been wanting to sound off on it for a while but just haven’t taken the time. I kept thinking it was going to finally fade into oblivion but since Allstate’s advertising firm has decided it plays well with the modern society’s bullshit view of gender politics it keeps popping up. Ha. The idea that they think this commercial is appealing to women is yet more evidence of this commercial being (you guessed it) condescending to women.
* Women are shitty drivers. **
** Women are not shitty drivers, per se. Statistics are what they are and statistics pretty clearly state that when you put all women and all men together, women on average are less expensive to insure. I haven’t looked at the numbers across age groups or races or regions so this could be out of date but that is the prevailing wisdom. Ladies: the reason men think you all suck at driving (and you do) is because we evaluate driving abilities the same way we evaluate athletic ability. We could play catch in the backyard and you could throw the ball accurately to my glove 10 times out of 10 and I’m still going to walk away laughing and say, “Ha, she gets it there but she sure throws like a girl.” Now statistically, you did what you needed to do and didn’t make any mistakes but you looked like a dweeb doing it. But if you were a man, you would have whipped the ball in there using a variety of grips. Maybe I would be down in a low position to try and both catch the ball and then quickly sweep my arm to tag the invisible runner. So maybe the ball goes past me and into the bushes a few times or I drop it a few times. Then, statistically speaking, we execute the catch more times when it’s me and the girl playing (and if you were “insuring” the ball against hitting the grass you’d give better rates to the girl) but the guy is the better ball player. Make sense?
MrHarmanson 