reclaim your manhood ... buy a hummer

My apologies to those of you who heard me rant about this two weeks ago, but I was at the gym this morning when I saw this ad again.

The insidious genius of good (or evil, depending on your perspective) advertising is that it isn't selling a product. It's selling a lifestyle /filling an emotional need / psychological deficiency. Take for example, Revlon. It makes no bones about the fact that it's not actually selling make-up: it's selling hope.

I wonder what psychographic GM is trying to appeal to with the new Hummer ad:

Two guys are in the checkout line at the grocery store. Guy #1 has a crapload of healthy foods and a tub of organic tofu. Behind him, guy #2 is buying a bunch of meat (I swear, it's half a cow on the conveyor belt). Guy #1 proceeds to rush through the checkout process in order to get himself to the Hummer dealership. At the end of the ad, the tagline reads (in bold block letters, no less): "Buy a Hummer: Restore your manhood."

Each time I've seen the ad, I've lost my composure and found myself doubled over laughing so hard that I was wheezing on the elliptical trainer.

Let me get this straight— he's gotta buy a hummer in order to be a man? Um, hello, people. Does anyone else smell the (unintentional) irony?

1. The last time I checked, "hummer" is a metaphor for a blowjob
2. He buys a monster truck to be a man? How does that not scream that he's (over)compensating for some other deficiencies downstairs?

Apparently, I'm not the only one laughing at the double entendre. The online reactions range from pissed off feminists to those saying "at least they're being honest" to this one:

My jaw dropped and I looked at my girlfriend. We were both pretty much taken back by this display of filth. I couldn't believe it. How could GM step to an all time low like this? Not only are they portraying their crappy, not to mention ugly, contraption of a vehicle, the Hummer, as some kind of manly device, but they are also suggesting that people that eat healthy, like myself, are somehow lesser men. Why don't they just come out and say it, "Drive a Hummer, don't be a fag." It's pretty insulting. If GM wants to make a profit on their crappy cars here is an idea: Stop making gas hogs that people don't need that destroy the environment and further portray the image of an SUV driver as a cool, hip, "manly" person when in all actuality, anyone that wastes money on them, especially the Hummer, is a fucking moron.