I attended a focus group to give feedback about a series of commercials that will air nationally. I think I experienced “snowflakes” in the flesh for the first time. They were offended by something in every one of those commercials. Saying, “The female manager in the first commercial was too dominating. I’m sick and tired of seeing the stereotype that women are bossy.” “The woman in the second commercial was too wimpy. It’s a stereotype to portray women as weak.” “Only one of the three characters in this commercial was a black woman.” Another commercial was simply a man by himself, looking at the camera, describing a feature of the product and a participant referred to it as “mansplaining.”
Then they get around to two commercials portraying Italian-Americans as mobsters. I was probably the only Italian-American in the room, it certainly crossed my mind to complain, but I’m not going to play that game. I didn’t say a word. So if you see an uptick in Italian stereotypes in commercials in the near future, you can blame me for that.
There was also an ad showing two men doing yoga, and a woman was reading homoerotic innuendos that I swear were not there and saying instead of two men it should be a man and a woman so the LGBT community wouldn’t be offended. Everyone else in the room had quizzical looks on their faces for that one, it wasn’t just me. If she had really been up to date on her wokeness she would have said “LGBTQIA+” (and sometimes Y).
