An Australian beer company tries the ‘buy our beer and save yourself from metrosexuality’ approach.
I’ve been to Australia and can tell you that the beer in question certainly isn’t going to sell itself on something as gay as, er, tasting nice.
I doubt this approach, however ironic it may be, is going to be very effective. Several ailing American brands, including Hummer and the Republican Party, tried the reassuringly retrosexual approach a few years back, and look what happened to them.
Traditional beer manufacturers have been hit hard by metrosexuality, especially in Australia which, for all its Crocodile Dundee image abroad, is one of the most metrosexualised countries on the planet. Australian men no longer just drink ‘beer’ (‘Pint please, mate’ ‘What kind?’ ‘What kind?? Do I look like a pooftah!?’) — and instead actually have tastes and preferences. Even if they still drink beer — and not many young men do — they have standards. How lah-dee-dah. Even worse, they no longer spend all their disposable income on ‘beer’, but lots of other consumer products, including of course clothes, gym membership and vanity products.
How times have changed. I remember UK beer ads from the 70s and 80s which sold beer as the essential and compulsory ingredient of masculinity. Some were fun, but generally there was something slightly depressing about them and the men that appeared in them. The masculinity represented in them was generally as mass produced and industrial as the product, and pretty much all the ads depended on the idea that men needed to be medicated with cheap alcohol to enjoy one another’s company. And there always, always had to be at least three of them in case we though they might be getting up to any funny business. ‘Beer’ was boring normality on tap.
That tap is running dry.
Tip: M Castro
Twitter
Facebook
I just read a ‘pornographic’ story by a Muslim woman about a Muslim whore incidentally! It read like a revolutionary tract. This looks good as well, flying the flag for adulterers and low-down whores…
http://melissa.tumblr.com/post/1202103618/laura-kipnis-against-love-anonymous-after
I have found I am pretty rubbish at being a slut, and not for want of trying, but I am a torchbearer for women sluts, slags, hussies, whores, hookers, and low-down harlots everywhere, even the Muslim ones. No, especially the Muslim ones…
It has really not served either women or men to imagine that women are biologically virtually the same, any more than it serves gay men wellto believe that their “marriagabiliyty would be the same as heterosexuals. Sometimes I think that the Moslems are better off all around (everyone happier-which they all are) with women in burkahs and enjoying the protection and security which their society gives them. The people I’ve talked to are certainly happy until they are told by westerners that they have to change. That certainly includes women. Camile Paglia, as much as she is despised by feminists has had an interesting amount of truth to what she says, as things work out with feminism in Western Society. When we want a demonstration of real intensified insanity we bring out the Sarah Palins and her whole virtual herd of mimics oin American politics: If there was ever an arguement for bringing back the Burkah, it’s those foolish harridans.
In truth, not the silyness that comes from promoting the idea that female sexuality is just like that of the male and that consequently their behavior should be, it might serve the discusion better to look at the kind of things that anthropologists look at. females don’t benefirt particularly nature from having multiple intercourse with almost everymalre that comes along. In that the natural outcome of female sexuality is impregnation at the right time, by a male who will give the strngest offspring, she really only needs one sexual experience per mating season. In nature, a female comes into heat, unless arificially laced with hormones, when she is due to have an offspring; then she stops. Males are constructed to breed at nearly any time, because , as we all know, they have to be on the ready for females to be inspired.
One of the larger, more posh bathhouses in San Francisco, on Folsom Street toward downtown was a straight bathhouse. I imagine that the web is used by Heterosexual women who want quick hook ups , just like gay men.
Of course much of the dynamic steering women to casual sex here in the U.S. is the prevalent career woman ethic . Actually it seems as if anyone wanting a future with large corporations is damned to a very limited amount of free time. Consequently, to push a lot in to that small time space, it is required that they settle for or learn to prefer casual non-commital sexual encounters. this has become, it is my understanding common in this country. Unlike in European social democracies, people with well paying jobs have no time to work on relationships, they are expected to work all the time. Whether this is an unanticipated reward for being fools to this system or a forced reconcilliation, I don’t know.
One of my “corporate” friends mentioned that all of his female associates were having twins and multiple births at 40 from artificial insemination, so that they could have the birth at the right time in their careers. We live in a very strange socieety now.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Alcohol-Years-DVD-Carol-Morley/dp/B0007YH6CE/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1285178604&sr=1–1 Carol Morley. ‘Project: please contact me if you knew me between 1982–1987′… it broke my heart. There would never be a film about a man like this. But I won’t digress into reductive binaries. Still it is an amazing piece of ‘self-ethnography’. Really brave.
some women do explore and sleep around the way gay men do. But they are very very bad girls.
There is a great film made by a notorious ‘slag’ in Manchester, in the 90s, called ‘The alcohol years’ where she conducts intevrviews with many of the men she fucked. And they all are quick to judge her or pity her or psychoanalyse her… But if she had been a gay man, she’d have just been run of the milll.
I would qualify that with we OUGHT to all be explorers.
Republicans (true ones, not closeted self immolaters) and women will likely never, without medication, roam bathhouses and sleep around the way gay men can. That’s one of the reasons that straight men don’t do what gay men do. It just doesn’t work that way sista!
Don’t confuse feminazi and right wing overprotection of women and demonization of “male” instincts (both towards women a la Slick Willy and among “misogynist/dirty” homos) with internal timidity of women and internal confidence of the boys in a world without women. Social constructionism does stab at and dismantle prejudice but only until it becomes its own blind prejudice, favoring unlikely scenarios such as the untenable chaos of “no rules are real rules”. Metrosexuality, however much Mr. S would like it to be, is still a long way off from, Babylon. To wit, metrosexuality as an exploration of fluid artistic narcissistic identity ranging from traditionally feminine hairstyles for men to 3 somes where you high five your buddy and touch cocks inside the girl is still categorically different from two males walking into a room, removing their clothes and getting it on, alone. It isn’t metrosexuals who are going to be seen pumping each other behind a club where women dance, too. That’s what gay bars are FOR, baby!
Mark w : I have yet to talk to a heterosexual man who would not readily screw other women(than wives) in a second if they weren’t bound by social customs
Same goes for women.
Imagine a world where it was women who roamed the Heaths and the tea rooms, and the bath houses, and had sophisticated signal systems for instigating sex with strangers without saying a word? One of the social assumptions I hate the most, is that women should fear men, and the dangerous outside world, and not venture out exploring. I think we are all explorers.
I like that term ‘sport fucking’. I might agree with both QRG and Mark W — I think some people use sex to find ‘something’ — that could just be an orgasm (a momentary pause, or as the french say ‘le petit mort’ which just translates to a pause in the case of an orgasm which is induced by a chemical rush high) or and similarly, a connection, as a result of feeling ‘disconnected’ (same reason religious people seek God — to connect because they feel disconnected and therefore vulnerable and afraid). Sex and most things can and usually are manipulated for other reasons than the purely sensual reasons that they were, for lack of a better term, intended.
Ego-less sex is still the best sex you can have. As far as love is concerned, personally I only know of unconditional love as having an reality. As far as ego relations go — love is pre determined by conditions — in which case, it should be given another name.
It occured to me that there could be an atavistic feature in some female genetics which give them in relation to the child bearing function, an inclination to look for some dependant characteristic in males
to assure their care when they have offspring. It would be far fetched to assume that all women had this but rather that it arose coincidentally with aggrarian societies. I.e., we wpoldn’t want to make such a claim about tribes where women and young children lived in one hut and men in the other.
I can assure you that appart from men who are impelled by extreme religious belif to make a number of outlandish claims, I have yet to talk to a heterosexual man who would not readily screw other women(than wives) in a second if they weren’t bound by social customs. their ar sometimes men , both hetero and homosexual who are just so insecure that they feel fortunate to have cornered one person to screw– the situation, I think, in Brokback Mountain.
The reality presented in movies has nothing to do with real life; they are simply fallout from Cristianity,
and leaving women feeling secure and men confused or befuddled.
Sorry for the typos, spellcheck doesn’t work on this computer, so while my other is down, we have this. i’ll try to be more carefull. I’ve gotten used to not proofing my computer renderings.
That is exactly what the Christian fathers would have us belive. it makes it all fit into such a nice package of commitment and social obligation. Homo sapiens are most closely related to the bonobos monkeys, in which their is free floating totally nonmonogamous and continuous sex play. There is a new Book out by several European psycholgists who shake up the Monogamy myth and all the security seeking social binding presuptions that mainly Christians like to make, these factors are caried over to us in the movies. There may have been some similar mythmaking in some post agricultural societies.
Certainly, for my part the less I know about my sexual partners the better the sex . This is the product of considerable experience. In fact , the people (gay men) i love the most are people who I’ve commited myself to not having sex with. The consequence is deep abiding relatedness and trust that would never prevail if sex was there. The relationships where sex remained an important factor were violent and crazy. I had one relationship with a woman which worked because of the great degree of emotional separation guaranteed by the fact that she was so terribly feminine and I her opposite. We didn’t share anything but a good humored tolerance of each others differences which was possible because of the sexual reward. I don’t know If you would call that love or not . It ‘s about as good as a heterosexual relationship can be.
I would definitely say that the idea of sex and deep love being in any way truly compatible yet necessary is absurd, and everyone would be better off admitting it; I’ve never seen any such human phenomenon, only wishfulk thinking and pretense.
Oh we don’t need Christianity to confuse sex and love, Mark W. I think our psyches do that for us — in any culture. I mean, sex is a form of love, isn’t it? I don’t really believe people who say they just want sex. We are all searching for something, a connection, whether it is in the car parks of Lancashire or the Bath Houses of San Francisco. I actually find these stories of fleeting, casual sexual encounters — especially as told by gay men for some reason — quite romantic. It is all about desire.
I think that it has to be clear that for me there is a distinction in a eudaimonistic life between love which seems rarely to have had an active sexual element, and plain old lust in its many varieties. People confudse those two , I believe primarily as a byproduct of Christianity which attempts to justify the “baser” feelings by overlaying it with Christian love as they do even when commiting the worst abominations. Marriage is nothing but the formalization of that mystification.
Actually , Mark, I do think that the three way bit my be a more common phenomenon than I give it credit for . It’s just never been a feature of my life except tangentially with “married ” couples who need to keep an eye on one another.
Possibly the environment I had generally been used to was uniquely liberated and versitilke San Francisco,much of my gay life and more than likely I’ve always gravitated towar people who are very liberal sexually but I have some experiences which are at odds with what you two describe M.S & QRG. For one thing , before sex became so casual that it didn’t involve any social pretexts at all, I had and knew other gay men who would bring a “fuck buddy” along for companionship (never threesomes) for sport fucking. We would go to the baths and compete for who engaged the most of a predetermined group of desireable partners, and keep score or sometime just competatively compare
experiences. We would try different specialzed venues (fisting , golden shower, etc.) . I do know married people who do the threesome bit . I can easily see why straight guys would bring partners just to have someone to talk to when waiting for a possible lay. Women sometimes do the same thing. They have to have a none competative relationship. The fact is , if you don’t get laid you don’t waste the night sitting around waiting.
QRG, I wouldn’t take Sarah Palin to a cat fight, if was you. Hookers can be good company. But it is reasonable to assume that if you bond with an independant enough woman who has good boundaries, and is wise about sex for it’s own sake you can find company.
It”s possible to integrate sex into our social lives to the degree that we accept it for what it is, no more and think creatively about how to make it a social event.
…it won’t be long before the only women prepared to sit and drink with me will be hookers and Sarah Palin.
that’s what struck me about those wingmen ads– they had something of the pick-up about them in themselves. But I hadn’t thought of the specific connotations of the role.
Also women tend to make the best wingmen. I have chatted up women for men friends before now. And ended the night alone. Result!
Yes, women would make the best wingmen in the sense of getting women to let down their defences. But you, QRG, seem to provoke some women to put up a lot of flak.…
Are you going to tell me if gay men have a ‘wingman’ when they go out drinking on the pull? My guess is not. Because the idea is that women are tough nuts to crack, even with copious amounts of alcohol, so it needs a two-header approach, whereas gay men, well, I bet it doesn’t even take half a shandy.
No, in my experience gay men don’t have ‘wingmen’ — unless of course they have a partner and they like to go looking for threesomes.
I think there are a number of reasons why gay men don’t need a wingman. As you suggest it’s not that difficult to ‘pull’ in the first place. But also part of the point of a wingman is to show that you’re ‘popular’ and not a ‘loser’ or a ‘weirdo’. Which doesn’t seem to matter much for gay men when it comes to sex. Conversation seems to also be quite an important element of seducing women, but not so much with gay men who tend to let their bodies do the talking. Again, a wingman is useful backup because a lot of straight men don’t know what to say to women — or at least, women that they are chatting up — and a wingman can help fill the awkward silences and also provide emotional support when rejection (which women are very good at, apparently) comes.
Finally, you need to remember that a wingman is actually someone who is ‘watching your back’ — and the popularity of the term probably originates with the hysterically homoerotic movie Top Gun. So a wingman is there both as a possibly homoerotic ‘Iceman’ thrill, with the potential of a MMF threesome always hovering in the background, but also as a blokey kind of repudation of anything ‘gay’. Making sure that no one gets up your arse while you go ‘in for the kill’.
One of the few things I can think of in America that isn’t totally fucked up by corporatization is the brewing of beers. While the attempt to make a beer to your own liking is admirable and I think that it may be a by product the older hippie generations. I used to be fond of stouts, lagers and heavier beers from Ireland and the U.K. tasty and potent.
“British beer tastes like slightly acidic water.”
Maybe you need to go to a real pub that cares about what it sells and knows how to store and keep it. Proper British beers and ales are one of the glories of this country and as far as I know is like nothing anywhere else in the world. Read the 2nd chapter in Paul Kingsnorth’s book Real England to get a feel where it also points out that “Today’s multinational brewers and stock market floated pub companies find a handful of brands of lager, alcopops, wine and slickly marketed bottled beers, ciders and mixers easier, more profitable and much less trouble than dangerously awkward — and definably local — real ale could ever be.”
Retro is sad, and this strategy will work only for losers. I don’t think that the majority of people who drink beer (almost a soft drink) could desire consolation and the paaathetic charme of these ads.
oops sorry I double posted that link. Oh well, it is so funny (to me as a bird) it’s worth seeing twice.
There’s a weird ‘sensible drinking’ poster campaign out at the moment in the Uk, aimed at men.
http://www.theattractionforums.com/uk/111664-wingman-london-wanted-must-fun-interesting.html
Whatever their poison, I love how straight men (in the UK) like to go out with a ‘wingman’ for support. But
I now think ‘wingman’ may have another, more intimate meaning…
http://www.theattractionforums.com/uk/111664-wingman-london-wanted-must-fun-interesting.html
Mark s: It’s a nice manipulation on VB’s part. VB is mostly drunk by ‘old fellas’ here, and they think they can manipulate the older male crowd… and they may be right. Like the little ad I sent you, and like you mention above — there is a sense of cliche’d retrosexual ‘right wingery’ to it all. Your not a ‘real fair dinkum Aussie’ if your a metro, but it’s all bullshit. You don’t spend millions of dollars on a social political campaign — you spend it cause you want to make a profit. It’s all so… well… it’s all so Australian.
Australian beer companies are trying to get those metro dollars by selling things like Coopers Clear and XXXX summer beer http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/lifestyle/summer-daze-xxxx-goes-low-carb-20090910-fimp.html.
They are low carb for the body conscious modern Aussie male. I actually prefer them myself. They win my vote by not making you feel bloated. Of course, the ultimate metro beer is my current favorite and thats a Peroni Leggera low carb beer http://www.marketingmag.com.au/news/view/peroni-joins-aussie-low-carb-lager-battle-1105. It’s more metro than Aussie beer because it’s Italian. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s very easy to drink.
Marcelo: I notice from one of those reports you linked to that VB have also brought out a low carb beer ‘for the under 30s market’. Which would indicate that their current retro campaign for high-carb VB is something of a ‘rearguard’ action.
Here’s a pooftah limey soft drink pretending to be hard:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/sep/15/soft-drinks-hard-men
Australian men, straight and gay, are, indeed, ridiculously and boringly fussy about beer. The only cultural difference between Australian cities is what kind of football’s played and what the different sizes of beer glasses are called.
British beer tastes like slightly acidic water.
Simon: Surely you meant ‘slightly acidic warm water’?