This is an opinion purely about the advert, it's in the TV section not Food and I don't really want to tell you what I think about the chocolate, having a big rant about sexism is going to be much more fun: I find this advert refreshing in it's sexism, there are plenty of sexist adverts out there but they tend to poke fun at men. The Archers advert where the men suck their bellies in, if that was the other way around, women trying to look thin in front of a man then there would be uproar. If we take such adverts too seriously and take offence at something as innocuous as this where does it all stop? Where are all the men's rights groups, 'Male Liberation Army', and 'Equal Jobs for Men'?

The fact that there are adverts out there that are sexist against men is not an argument to allow an advert that is potentially insulting to women and Yorkie may have gone a bit too far. The slogan 'It's not for girls' is a clever piece of advertising, reverse messaging, obviously it isn't going to put many women off eating Yorkies and those that it does won't be paying attention to the actual message but will be 'boycotting' the product seeing as they don't like the advertising campaign. I'm not sure the effect that the advertisers are hoping this message will have on men, I've heard it suggested that men may buy Yorkies to annoy women but this seems a little unlikely to me. The discerning British public will surely buy or not buy Yorkie according to whether they respectively like or don't like the chocolate?

I've read opinions on here that I think totally miss the point, they complain that there are lots of adverts sexist against women. I don't think this is gender specific marketing, there is no way Nestle are going to alienate women deliberately and I'm pretty sure that they didn't expect this advertising campaign to do so. The advert in question is the girl, dressed as a
man, trying to convince a shop keeper that she's male in order to be allowed to purchase a men only Yorkie bar. The advert is very much a joke and the way the girl tries to convince us and the shopkeeper that she is in fact male is by following such clichés as explaining the offside rule. Her 'defeat' is in the end engineered by the shop keeper ingeniously ;-) complementing her on being good looking or having nice eyes or something similar and because she responds 'in a feminine manner' he 'finds her out' and refuses to sell her the bar. Sorry for the extensive use of inverted commas ' ' ' but I'm trying to cover myself by not making out that any of that is my opinion.

We have to find a balance as a society about political correctness. We've done the first few phases, the ultimate, you will burn in hell if you are not PC and then the seesaw effect kicked in and we went through a patch where, for a segment of the entertainment and media community, it was fashionable to be anti PC. Throughout both of these the main drive was sexist jokes with women on the receiving end. Sexist jokes with men on the receiving end didn't really get counted by anyone in either of these phases because they 'aren't really that bad' or don't really count as sexist. Admittedly some of this is because the more offensive and often, in the audience view (and we have to consider the audience carefully here) funnier, sexist jokes directed at women are based upon a stereotyping of the fairer sex that has lasted for hundreds of years. The equivalent jokes insulting men are based upon a reaction to increased female freedoms that has at most been publicly representable in that type of humour for a century.


In the previous paragraph I used the phrase 'the fairer sex'. I hope no one took offence and if you did well, I admire your principles. This kind of thing is normally accepted and generally accepta
ble (not at all the same thing), everyone reading this knew I meant females of the human species and not males. Thus it is a generally held view that women are the 'fairer sex'. Again some of this is just because the phrase has been used so for a long time and has transcended being two words which we interpret separately. But the point remains, if I were to use the phrase 'the stronger sex' to mean men then we would have a different response. Here on Dooyoo not much would happen, maybe a comment and a load of people thinking me a weirdo (more so than now even) but if I were a public figure or such a phrase got printed in a newspaper (here the Sun, News of the World etc. do not count as newspapers) or other widely read publication there would inevitably be complaints from various quarters. There would be comments about strength meaning different things to different people and strength of character being more important than physical strength and so on. These comments are not made about 'the fairer sex'; beauty is in the eye of the beholder, many men are more attractive (to the majority of the population) than many women, so on ad infinitum.

Incidentally the phrase 'the stronger sex' was used a while ago in a publication and this type of fuss was raised from a lot of women's rights groups. I think it was discussed (hehe) on Have I got news for you but may well be mistaken.

The way to get a crown in this section would be to write a feisty, well written opinion telling all how the adverts on television that insult women aren't right and that the Yorkie one we are considering here shouldn't be brushed aside as a joke. A similarly written opinion as far as quality is concerned taking the 'it's only and advert' tack or even the approach I've taken would, I think, be much less likely to get crowned. This is for two reasons; there are more ladies on Dooyoo who are reading ops in this category who
would react badly to such an approach than would react well and secondly and more importantly I think Dooyoo would want to be very careful crowning an op that could be argued to be sexist as this may reflect upon them. This is, despite what many of you are probably thinking, not an argument solely aimed to get this op crowned (as if writing that in an opinion would have a positive affect in that direction anyway) but I think it is a valid point and yet more evidence that being sexist against women is punishable and frowned upon and being sexist against men isn't taken seriously and is much more acceptable.

I, as you are all now surely aware, am male. I do not take offence at the Archers adverts, I do not think people should take offence at this Yorkie advert. What concerns me is that the Yorkie advert has elicited a section here on Dooyoo and the Archers advert did not. This reflects the attitude of the people towards sexism on television and in the media. Once again no offence intended to anyone, live and let live. I have reason to dislike Nestle without them doing this. I am not supposed to argue that here, Dooyoo make clear that no advertising (and hence boycotting) is not allowed but I'm sure many of you know what I am referring to.