Snickers Machismo

By Adrian Rubio

Snickers’ slogan “you’re not you when you’re hungry” can be interpreted in various ways. You can be annoying, obnoxious, whiny, and sometimes even a woman. In the Snickers commercial posted on YouTube titled “Snickers Road Trip Commercial,” the hungry male is in the back seat of an old Volvo on a road trip is portrayed as a whiny woman. Snickers is implying that if you’re hungry and grumpy you will act like a woman. This video is communicating in a sexist manner to the male audience that if they eat their candy bar when they are hungry, God forbid, they won’t act like women.

One of the factors for being a male is to not express anything from your feminine side. To show any of that to fellow men is to show weakness, which defies the basics of being a man. Bringing the commercial into perspective, a long road trip can wear a person down. The manly thing to do is to suck it up and power your way through because men do not complain. A stereotype of women is to whine a lot, so producers portray the hungry one as a diva who nags at the others in the car. She bickers by saying, “turn the AC up. I’m dying back here.” This is an over-statement, a hyperbole. She won’t die she just wants things her way. Snickers is advertising that with eating their product your feminine behavior can be prevented, so men will not be ridiculed by their peers for being like a women.

Another factor to being manly is to be hungry. In movies, video games, and media, men are always the ones seen feasting on large amounts of food. The majority of food commercials show men consuming the products because men need to be satisfied with food. Snickers advertises this when you eat one of their candy bars your hunger will be satisfied. When a man is hungry, he wants something that will fill his craving up, not some girly granola bars or fruit. As the slogan claims, “Snickers satisfies.” Males have a physical appetite, which can be a metaphor for their sexual appetite as well, that needs to be met. Have a craving? Act on it. Satisfy it. That is what men do, and they have every right to have it met.

Relating back to the feminine subject, women are rarely seen being physically fighting with another woman. Men are the aggressive and violent ones, which is stated as the third attitude of men. The slap from the diva to the shotgun passenger is considered to be a feminine action, but the aggression behind it is considered masculine. The male who had been slapped is not delighted by the action, which reveals that the performance of aggressiveness and violence is slowly declining in appreciation between males.

There are many aspects of manhood that go unrecognized in such things as commercials. Many people just watch the Snickers commercial and see a candy without realizing that they are being attacked with stereotypes. The company uses these stereotypes to draw their audience in and sell their product. That is how they sell it to men by insulting women and making men the superior ones.