Molson Suggests That Guys Go on ‘Guyets’ If They Want to Lose Weight and Remind Everyone How Sexist They Are

Low-calorie beer commercials, like that Michelob Ultra one in which two fit co-workers perform a sexual rollerblade tango thanks to the low-cal beer that they’ve evidently been drinking AT WORK, can be a bit heavy-handed when they’re trying to reach their target audience — people who want to drink beer, but not too much beer, and have fun, but not irresponsible fun, and rollerblade, but not without wrist pads. It’s a niche market, you might say. Molson realizes how tricky pitching super-light beer can be, so it’s come up with a way to make men feel like big, woods-shitting, hamburger-destroying grizzly bears by advertising its new 67-calorie beer as part of a balanced “guyet.” Use it in a sentence? Oh, okay, let’s see … “You might go on a guyet if you wanted to lose some weight but were too much of a misogynistic douche to say you were going on a diet.” Easy-peasy.

The Society Pages’ Lisa Wade tears Molson’s “guyet” campaign apart, as well she should — it’s sexist to the max, not to mention that it condescends to its male audience by assuming they’re all too fat and insecure to admit that they’d like to stop eating like high school soccer players who scored a $100 gift certificate to T.G.I. Friday’s for winning the state championship. Molson, however isn’t the only offender, and Wade concisely reckons that this ad trend of “androcentrism” is entirely unfair:

Dieting is stupid ’cause girls and everything associated with girls is stupid. Guyeting is awesome ’cause guys are awesome.

The reverse doesn’t apply. Women who do things men like to do – drink whiskey, play sports, become surgeons, have dogs, etc – somehow rise in our esteem. Men’s worth, in contrast, is harmed by their association with femininity. This is a layer of gender inequality above and beyond sexism, the privileging of men over women; it’s androcentrism, the privileging of the masculine over the feminine. Since women are required to do femininity, it means being required to do trivial, demeaned, and disparaged things. Meanwhile, men have to come up with stupid excuses for participating in basic healthy activities like going for a jog.