moon_custafer | Random Minor Complaint

We also had lunch in a restaurant downtown, with the usual tv screens in the background. Luckily the sound was off, but at one point I noticed an ad for trucks which began with a "non-fat, decaf, overpriced" cup of coffee being crushed beneath the wheels of the big manly pickup truck RAWR!! Are ads still dissing lattes to prove their salt-of-the-earth masculinity? I thought that had died out a few years ago after Esso stations began selling cappuchino.

I know this shouldn't bug me so much, but during the months I was shipping clerk in a warehouse I never heard any of the guys there say anything against fancy coffees. Admittedly, the topic of coffee rarely came up (mostly they preferred to talk about politics/religion). The only one who ever mentioned Starbucks said he quite liked their lattes. Also admittedly, they probably weren't the target audience for this ad, being a multi-ethnic bunch of guys who mostly took public transit to work; the ones who drove trucks drove full-size freight trucks. The white guy from a rural background who was probably closest to the ad's image of a man's man was the guy who liked the lattes. He also liked kale.

I guess this is the usual annoyance I feel whenever anyone tries to sell a product on the "Real men do (xthing which in fact only *some* men do)" line.