From the desk of the editor:

More and more, I find myself looking around in this world and thinking, “seriously?”

Over fall break I had one of these moments, when in a gas station in western Iowa I stumbled across the newest offering in low-calorie soda: Dr. Pepper 10.

Really though, it’s not the product I take issue with as much as the marketing campaign and slogan supporting it. Window clings exclaimed from the cooler that “It’s not for women!!!!”

A quick trip to youtube led me to a television spot as well, in which burly men tear through the jungle in a dune buggy, dodging lasers, punching huge fake snakes in the face (spoiler alert: the snake explodes), shooting large guns and asserting that Dr. Pepper 10 has, and I quote, “only ten manly calories.”

It’s messages like this that make me identify as a feminist more and more every day.

While I recognize that their marketing technique here is obviously hyperbolic, there’s a fine line between ironic hyperbole and actual sexism. Not long after the showy demise of our serpentine friend, the spokesman explicitly asks, “Hey ladies. Enjoying the film? Of course not.”

That’s a bit presumptuous. Why can’t they enjoy it? While, in a way, he’s right – I, a young man clearly in their target demographic, do love explosions, lasers and punching (seriously, awesome) – there really is no reason a woman couldn’t enjoy senseless violence in advertising just as much as I can. That’s her right, just as much as it is mine.

On a related issue, it is upsetting that brutally apparent masculinity has to be so directly tied to violence, but that’s for another day.

Granted, wry marketing like this has been wildly successful in recent years. Just look at the Old Spice guy, whose over-the-top ‘ladies man’ persona has spawned countless commercials and a widely followed twitter account.

There’s a distinct difference though, and it lies in the positive and negative. While the Old Spice campaign is about over exaggerated masculinity, Dr. Pepper’s is about the specific exclusion of women, and maybe that’s our own fault.

Coca Cola has been running a similarly targeted product for years, dodging the apparently inherent stigma that ‘diet’ is a feminine term with their Diet Coke in disguise, Coke Zero. Coke Zero, although different enough in formula to garner its own name, is
still essentially Diet Coke. This change of name must be effective too, otherwise Coke Zero wouldn’t persist as a product.

The powers that be behind Dr. Pepper have chosen to market their product this way, but are alienating consumers through their perpetuation of inane gender roles. Even I, a member of their target audience, am uncomfortable with the assumptions this campaign makes. Everyone is entitled to enjoy their fake-sugar-water equally, regardless of gender.

At the close of the television spot, the spokesman signs off with a smug, “So you can keep the romantic comedies and lady drinks.”

Hey, I like romantic comedies.