U.S. men strike back at their negative media image

Press, 4 January 1988, Page 10

U.S. men strike back at their negative media image

By

ANNICK BENOIST.

NZPA-AFP.

American men say they are tired of what they claim is a feminist conspiracy to depict them in the United States media as morons and monsters. Some outraged males have launched a campaign to refurbish their image. “The feminists have gone too far,” says David Rose, chairman of the National Congress for Men, a 10,000-member, Colorado-based men’s rights group. “Look at advertisements,” suggests men’s rights activist Fred Hayward, founder of Mr' Media Watch, a group dedicated to the enhancement of the American male’ image. "If one is incompetent, it’s a man. If one is panicked, it’s a man. If it’s a jerk, it’s a man. It’sunbearable.” The feminist “Ms Magazine” won Mr Media Watch’s 1987 best hypocrisy award for printing a perfume advertisement in

which a woman pinches a man’s behind in the street. “Could you imagine the reverse,” Fred Hayward asked. "There would be a revolution.” The “New York Times” earned male praise for refusing to run the advertisement. The cold cereal industry was chastised for what Fred Hayward called its campaign declaring 1987 “The Year of the Male Jerk.” The point was driven home, he says, with advertisements depicting feeble-minded, infantile males who, utterly unable to care for themselves, must be taught that breakfast cereals are good for growing boys. Kodak, however, was commended for giving "a tender-loving image of the

father-child relationship,” Fred Hayward said. So did Johnson and Johnson for its depiction of sensitive men selecting no-tear baby shampoos, even though the company acknowledged that it was more eager to get adults to buy its products than it was concerned with promoting fatherly love. David Rose maintains that with statistics showing a 40 per cent male contribution to household chores, there is no justification for media portrayal of men at a loss when it comes to changing diapers and generally unable to function without female guidance. The negative-male trend, he laments, has penetrated the country’s most popular television programmes. "See ‘Moonlighting,’ ” a comedy serial starring Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis, he urges. “Every 15 minutes she gives him a kick in his legs. A man couldn’t do that to a woman be-

cause of the feminism and abuse things.” Sex researcher Shere Hite’s controversial new book, “Women and Love,” adds to the pernicious trend, masculinists complain. The book, to put it politely, shows man as a brutal sub-species incapable of sensitivity or car ing. “Books like Hite’s encourage women to take the easy way out and just blame everything on men,” said writer Warren Farrell. “This malebashing makes women more suspicious and distrustful and demanding toward men, which causes men to withdraw, which causes women to get angrier.” Some men also complain that advertisements featuring nude male models degrade them to airhead sex objects. "This is ridiculous," said a New York businessman. “It positions man as though he’s only good for onts thing."