Jello and the American Male

Jingles. You remember those. I saw a commercial featuring an old jingle but with a new ending, which I don’t remember. “I am stuck on Band-Aids ‘cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me.”

I’ll give you a moment to sing that to yourself, out loud if you must.

Good. Now you’re remembering other jingles, aren’t you? It’s ok to admit it. Here, I’ll get you started…

”Bring out the Hellmann’s and bring out the best,”
“My baloney has a first name, it’s O-S-C-A-R…,”
“I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.”

You know you’re picturing that commercial…flower children who haven’t left the sixties, dancing and singing on lush rolling grassy knolls…It was the Kum By Ya of the seventies.

All for a soft drink that police use to get blood stains off of asphalt.

Now, if you’re like me, your next image is of the Native American man, crying a lonely tear down his leathery sun-beaten cheek because some lazy ass threw garbage in a creek.

You remember this.

So it got me to thinking about today’s commercials and the imprint they’ll leave behind, and I’m concerned. I’m concerned for the American male, and I’ll tell you why:

The American male is being portrayed as a gelatinous dolt.

A gelatinous dolt who can barely fix an Eggo waffle for his kids while the wife’s away. A gelatinous dolt who, once he stops sneaking Bud Lights and gets his lazy ass off the couch, can sure as hell grill a slab of meat and grunt into his toolbox. Now, I may be gelatinous (well, there’s no “may be” about it), but I’m no dolt. I can take care of my kids very well, thankyouverymuch and, well, Bud Light tastes like rat piss. Sure, if we grill out, I’m the one who does the grilling, but I certainly don’t treat it like some primal ritual. “I MAKE FIRE! grunt, grunt,” hold the meat triumphantly in the air like a trophy and then grab the wife by the hair and drag her in the cave. However, this is the perception of the American male that people of this generation will be left with.

Is that what we want?

Now in full disclosure, there are many American men who perpetuate and give credence to this portrayal. Ignore them. They are the sociological false positives. Throw them out. I would do this, literally, but apparently there are laws against such actions. But I’d like to think that the American male, for the most part, has changed. He is more actively involved with his family, he is more aware of his surroundings, he is, dare I say, more complete? I don’t know, but there is a difference. Maybe, after watching all that TV in the seventies, he is trying to “be all that you can be” without the Army.

To be sure, however, he is still gelatinous. “Watch him wiggle, see him jiggle…”