How big a man are you?

The ads for men in this reading were striking to me.  All over the internet, especially on sites like BuzzFeed, I have seen many vintage ads that are considered sexist towards women, encouraging them to stay in the kitchen, and advertise cooking and cleaning products.  I’ve always found these ads to be a little ridiculous and offensive but I didn’t know there were ads for men encouraging them to do the opposite.  These ads call out the men who aren’t in college or out getting jobs and telling them they’re not “real men” without these things.  The pressures of finding jobs and getting educated were real for them during this time period but today we only focus on what was holding the women back. 

I think this pressure is still real for men today.  Many universities and graduate programs are becoming dominantly female indicating that soon we will have a more female workforce in many fields.  I took PSYC 366: Understanding the Sexes last year and the professor (Dr. Struckman-Johnson) lectured about how there is a new trend where young men are dropping out of high school at much higher rates than usual and they’re not coming to college.  These uneducated men of today will face a similar struggle to what the ads in the reading depict.  Men are still defined by their occupations and how much money they make and many of the future men of America aren’t taking the steps to be successful under that definition.   Today, we are surrounded by movements to better the young women, like the Always ad from the Super Bowl, but young men don’t get this encouragement that they might also need.