Tuesday, January 17, 2012

This Old Spice commercial featuring Terry Crews, a professional athlete who we might consider hypermasculine, features the tagline "Smell is Power." If that is the case power in a masculine or in this case hypermasculine world is rather ephemeral. After all, linguistically, how can smell equal power? So, what is this commercial saying to its target audience? That you don't have any real or actual power, so you need to substitute some symbolic form of power instead? If that is the case, then what does this commercial also say about the status of males in U.S. society?