Built Toby Keith Tough

Considering the number of hip new television ads running these days, ones with vaguely underground bands crooning up-tempo pop songs about being able to dance and wear dark rimmed glasses, it's surprising that Ford still relies on the tried and true method of insulting your penis to sell trucks.

In the newest Ford truck commercial, two guys are discussing their erections – er – trucks, in a diner somewhere out west. The Dodge guy says that he has "two words for you...He-mi" and the Chevy guy retorts with "Sil-ver-a-do." Then they both lean back and ask the hulking alpha male stranger on the far end of the diner what he drives. Apparently, he drives a Ford F-150 and he then proceeds to haul out his penis and slap it on the table — I mean he pulls out cross-sections of truck frames in order to prove that he does indeed have the bigger/more powerful/more virile truck. The Chevy and Dodge guys are apparently emasculated and embarrassed and run home to cry bitterly and pray to God for a larger, more capable (truck) body.

And it's not just the suggestion that driving Ford trucks will make your penis bigger — though the lines "At Ford, we don't just make trucks stronger, we make you stronger" and "Are you man enough for a Ford Superduty?" make clear that the real reason to purchase the truck is so that your weak, impotent little body can finally become this throbbing, glistening gland engorged with blood. Or something like that.

What's most disturbing about this and other Ford commercials like it, is the hierarchy of American male they establish. In a similar Ford commercial, a gang of outlaw bikers intimidate a family on vacation, but are scared away from a bar by the numerous Ford trucks parked out front. The husband of the family, maybe because he drives a beige family sedan (Ford sells those too, right?) is little more than a cowering fool, despite the fact that he represents the only man in the commercial who has managed to sire children. Ford's ideal American male clearly isn't in the Hell's Angels or the (presumably) dull family sedan, but one who wears Axe body spray and makes wide circles around a Wal-Mart parking lot on Friday nights trolling for tang in his Ford truck.

Not all truck companies feel as though comparing your penis to their trucks is an effective way to sell vehicles. Hummer's H2, arguably a bigger and dumber truck than anything Ford has ejaculated recently, has, by contrast, a relatively amusing ad campaign. They've even used the Album Leaf's music. In Dodge's truck commercials, the vehicles are cartoonish, and you can almost forgive them for creating an ad campaign that revolves around the stuff of beer commercials — big breasts, implausible parties and mutated 12 year-olds who have apparently stolen cars, grown thin beards and screamed "HEMI" from the nearest rooftop.

With their choice of spokesperson, however, Ford seems to insist that it is a certain type of sex that sells trucks. Toby Keith — the stranger at the diner featured in the aformentioned commercial — is himself a huge, phallic, alpha male. He is also the guy who says "No other truck can touch Ford, brother," like you and he are best friends, and ends each commercial with "Ain't no doubt my king of the mountain's built Ford tough." And he's the same singer that wrote such constructive and soul-searching songs as, "Courtesy of Red, White and Blue (the Angry American)," "The Taliban Song," "If I was Jesus" and "Osama bin Laden is an Unappreciative Homosexual" (OK, I made the last one up).

All of this is pretty weird considering that Ford's relationship with Keith sounds awkwardly more than friendly. An official release from Ford states, "Toby truly is 'Built Ford Tough' both on and off stage. We are extremely pleased that we are continuing to strengthen our relationship with him."  (Long silence...cough). Ford seems to be not only conflating human bodies with truck bodies, but their truck-lust crosses eerily over into a lust for Toby Keith himself, which is fine if you like homophobic, reactionary country/pop stars.

Maybe the underlying message is that you can use your Ford Toby Keith's Penis F-350 Supercrew to kill terrorists, and if you don't have one, not only are you going to not get any, you probably don't want any.

But let's be honest, these truck commercials are targeting mainly working class audiences and clearly express a figure of American masculinity that is, yes, represented by Toby Keith's body, but also by the things he writes and represents. Ford is selling a caricature of male gender and it's a brawny Marlboro man/Western outlaw cowboy with oddly well-groomed facial hair (see: George Michael).  The average American male is twenty pounds overweight, passes out watching television and has poorly groomed facial hair (see: Walt Whitman).  Are we buying into this?  Is the myth of the cowboy-hero still so predominant that all it takes is a couple of songs about bombing foreigners and a ten gallon hat to loosen our wallets?  Can we not be expected to base our truck-buying decisions on engine comparisons, mileage efficiency or safety concerns?

Obviously not. The most depressing thing about this campaign is that it appears to work just fine.  Ford sells more trucks, Toby Keith buys another gold-plated house, and somewhere in hell Freud strokes his beard thoughtfully while he and Johnny Cash whip Henry Ford with a belt.

— Ehren Pflugfelder (pflugi at yahoo dot com)