Sexism and The Soda

A guest post by Josh Grau. You can follow Josh on Twitter.

I would never call myself a history buff, but I’m certainly a sucker for the origins of iconic events.

I’m Wikipedia’s best customer, starting in one curious place and 300 links later ending up somewhere even more random, a journey with more pop twists and culture turns than Choose Your Own Adventure novels or the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game.

I’ve literally spent hours combing the web — Salem Wiki Hunts I like to call them — trying to find the most elusive of details that will make me an instant expert, and when I get that one dinner party opportunity to wow the crowd with the granular nuggets of information I’ve extracted it’s better than Christmas morning.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus…The Movie! It came out in late 1985, starred Dudley Moore and John Lithgow and was directed by Jennot Szwarc, the mastermind behind Jaws 2, which incidentally featured former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis’s adopted son, John, as “Polo”, one of the local Amity teens who narrowly escapes Great White, Jr. (Impressive, isn’t it?)

Add YouTube to the mix and my endorphin rush becomes turbo-charged. Not only can I find the opening credit sequence to Silver Spoons: Season 2, but also the too-quickly-forgotten (if ever remembered) commercial for Sasson jeans circa 1979 featuring a pack of New York Ranger hockey players disco-dancing (and singing!) on skates, donning their game jerseys and (you guessed it) form-fitting designer denim. And they were serious.

The last few months I’ve found myself swimming in a sea of late 1960s and early 1970s nostalgia, and during a recent trip to San Francisco, I walked around the Haight-Ashbury and a makeshift museum honoring Harvey Milk totally fascinated by the historic movements that preceded me, yet totally disappointed in the realization that I was born 20 years too late.

So with that I turn to research to make up for the generation gap, and like a delusional kid building a time travel machine out of wooden crates and wagon wheels I submerse myself into every finite detail in the hopes that I can vicariously relive that moment in time. For example, the controversial prison release of Squeaky Fromme had me digging up every detail of the grizzly Manson Murders like a CSI detective, while the death of both Eunice Shriver and Ted Kennedy left me scrutinizing their famed family tree like a psychotic genealogist.

And I’d be remiss to not obsess over Woodstock, the hippie music festival that spawned modern replicas Lollapalooza and Burning Man, as well as the genius idea that you can charge a hefty price for a weekend of mud, music, and marijuana, and people will pay. Thanks to hordes of TV specials and a mediocre Ang Lee film, the 40th anniversary of Woodstock has taken center stage this summer and subsequently all of my free time (and at least 4-5 hours a week at work). But that is nothing; when Watergate (my favorite) celebrates its big 4-0 in a few years I may take an early retirement.

Another important theme of that groundbreaking era that equally intrigues me is women’s liberation. No longer were women relegated to a life of limited, prefixed options. They were going to college and (in-your-face, guys) graduate school, majoring in subjects beyond nursing and teaching, penetrating the business, political, and medical worlds in droves.

The iconic faces of the feminist movement were both real and fiction, and from the ashes of burning bras rose these trailblazers who brought estrogen to the forefront, one picket sign at a time: Gloria Steinem was the grand marshal; Helen Reddy penned the anthem; Billie Jean King battled the ultimate sexist; Barbara Walters wa-wad her way to an anchor chair; and then there was Maude, the the deadpan commando of Tuesday nights.

Et tu, Tab?

But what actually ignited the feminist fury that bore these pioneers? While many paradigm changes in history are boiled down to a singular incident that spawns a lasting ripple effect of great change, in all my Wiki-surfing I couldn’t find the specific instance, that one definitive Enron whistle-blowing moment that prompted a revolution.

But then it happened: I discovered the Holy Grail of the feminist movement in the form of a vintage video buried deep in the annals of YouTube. It was a commercial for Tab, the seemingly innocent diet soda that turned out to be the macho straw that broke the lady camel’s back. I’m not kidding.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDBJ2ktSZpI

The ad starts out like a benign love story with a waspy looking man sitting at his Mike Brady drafting table working late, yet unable to concentrate because he’s daydreaming about his lady. Fine; so far pretty realistic and non-offensive. Then comes a creepy, celestial overture and you begin to descend into the misogynistic acid trip that is this :30 spot. The lyrical dogma goes a little something like this:

When you can’t be with him, be in his mind
Be a mind sticker

A little bizarre and mildly disturbing out of the gate, but it gets deliciously worse. Our noble breadwinner’s romantic distraction is revealed as the scene changes to an image of a blond Peyton Place replica strolling by a motionless pond, perfectly slim, perfectly coiffed, perfectly programmed. When the fembot isn’t playfully exploring the lush grounds (where the hell is she, anyway?) we see scenes of mother and child crafting and canoodling.

Hey gals, who says you can’t stay at home after all? Then enters a voice over that’s as monotonously villainous as the Douglas Rain-dubbed (thank you Wikipedia!) HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick’s uber-ominous 2001: A Space Odyssey:

Be a mind-sticker…with a shape he can’t forget

Excuse me? And just as as you go to rewind the clip for proof that he actually said what you think he said, Enya the Obedient pleads on:

Don’t you want to have a good shape?
He wants you with a good shape
Shape with Tab…

The wheels of this diet bus to hell continue to fly off as HAL pontificates the “slimming” benefits of the soda, even bringing corporate governance into the mix with the message that “the Coca Cola company wouldn’t have it any other way.”

But it’s just a nefarious ploy to get women to chug the Stepford serum they were likely pumping into these deceptively chipper pink colored cans. And just when you hope a rained-drenched Paula Prentiss will rush in and stab our subservient paper doll, confirming our android suspicions as effervescing brown soda spews from the wound instead of blood, instead it’s our architectural knight in shining armor home from his long day.

He’s greeted lovingly by Cyndi the Cyborg, and as they kiss and “head upstairs” (you know where this is going), HAL offers a final piece of advice to all of those renegade female viewers contemplating a costly caloric trip to the kitchen before regular programming resumes:

You know, keeping your shape in shape has it’s rewards.
Enjoy Tab, and be a mind sticker.

Rewards!?! As if next to the jar of dog treats are the sex biscuits, given only for special weight loss accomplishments: Sit! Speak! Keep your shape in shape! The message is pretty clear: get fat and you won’t get any nookie. Wow, thanks HAL! Great advice, and phew…just in time.

These women were getting the wrong idea watching that independent, single, calorie consuming Mary Richards. Thank heavens for the pink interventionist, a low-cal miracle worker sent through the airwaves to restore peace and obedience and convince women to toss the Fritos, swallow the Dexatrim, and stand (stick?) by their men.

Meanwhile Our Lady of the Gynoid closes out Jonestown: The Musical with a final “mind sticker” chant, a ethereal grand finale intended to sway those not-yet-convinced to gulp themselves into slimming subservience and join the cola cult.

Note: next time you hear someone refer to “drinking the Kool Aid”, set them straight. Sure, the sugary fruit drink got all the euphemistic glory but clearly Tab did all the heavy lifting and paved the way for generations of brainwashing bliss.

You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby

The question remains: did this trite soda commercial spawn a feminist movement, or was this a feeble attempt by some Mad Men prototypes at a paradigm paralysis? I guess we’ll never truly know. But is it a coincidence that Tab suddenly began to vanish from grocery store shelves as women started to fill seats in the board room?

I’m no mathematician, but that’s an indirect proportionality I won’t dispute. Underneath the flexed wingspan of the feminist phoenix sits a little charred Tab, smothered by the powerful plumage of Ms. Magazine, Enjoli Perfume, and NOW rallies.

But heed caution: sealed restlessly inside Pandora’s Can is the mind-sticking, saccharine-sweet chauvinism that tried to shape a sex into submission one sip at a time. In the wrong hands it can be opened once again, each artificially sweetened drop able to drown the achievements of your founding mothers and their torch carrying descendants.

So ladies, when you need to make a symbolic gesture against l’homme fatale give the bras a break and instead crush a can. The Coca Cola company wouldn’t have it any other way…
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Josh Grau is – in the simplest terms and most convenient definitions – a marketer, a professor, a should-be comedian, a wannabe writer, a sports fan, a pop culture junkie, an improving recycler, a tornado survivor, a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.

Tagged as: Josh Grau, Pop Culture, Women and Empowerment