Soft Drink Seduction

The image of older men looking at young girls is viewed — and reasonably so — as perverted. But the practice of older women looking at young boys is completely appropriate. So much so that multi-million dollar businesses don't shy from attaching their images to the idea. Why is it that an older man seducing young girls earns ostracism, while an older woman seducing young boys earns high-fives?

Take this spot that interrupted my regularly scheduled program.

Boys playing soccer stop and gape as a minivan pulls up to the field. The Fountains of Wayne song "Stacy's Mom" starts pumping, arousing your attention, and that of a dozen ten-year-old boys. It tells the story of a young man who isn't falling for the girl next door. Instead, he's falling for her ma.

Here's the chorus:

Stacy's Mom has got it goin' on
She's all I want and I've waited for so long
Stacy, can't you see you're just not the girl for me
I know it might be wrong but I'm in love with Stacy's Mom.

Though the song doesn't explicitly condone soccer mom/teenage-boy sex, it certainly depicts it as harmless. The ad, however, lends a stronger visual to the song's already fairly obviously lyrical message. We move in slow motion and jump cut from body part to body part as a woman steps out onto the edge of the field. First we focus on her mid-section as her comfortable pull-over sweater flaps up slightly in the breeze. Back to the gawking ten-year-old soccer players who tightly grip their soccer balls. Move to the legs, where we notice her short socks cutely tucked into Keds sneakers. Cut back to the soccer players now with gaping mouths.

Finally, we're shown the woman in full: with a heart-shaped face, she's an attractive thirty-something, healthy body, cropped brown hair...oh, and a subtle, come-hither smile. She pushes the button on her set of keys, and the side door of her mini-van pops open, revealing the true prize: a giant tub of ice-cold Dr. Pepper.

The wide-eyed kids drop their balls and begin stampeding towards the sweet maternal embrace of Dr. Pepper. The ad ends with one last seductive glance from the ol' gal — pointed not toward us, but the boys. Perhaps just one special boy.

Dr. Pepper: the friendly...pick-up device for eager single thirty-something mothers?

Admittedly, hilarious. But what if the genders were reversed? It'd be an instant stomach-churning shift from The Graduate to "Lolita."

A dozen pre-pubescent girls playing soccer stop and gape as a minivan pulls up to the field. This time, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" by James Brown begins playing in the background.

Again, we move in slow motion and jump cut from body part to body part. From neck line, where a bit of breeze kicks his collar back, revealing a tuft of chest hair, to the legs, where newly pressed khaki Dockers are accented by light brown penny loafers. Cut back to the drooling soccer players, all but pulling at their pigtails in angst.

Finally, we are shown the man's face, he's a normal thirty-something: dark hair that's thinning a bit, a chest that's migrated partly to merge with gut...and a cocked smile and arched eyebrow, for the girls. Oh, yeah, and some soda. He pushes the button on his set of keys, and the side door of his mini-van pops open, revealing a giant tub of ice cold Dr. Pepper.

The wide-eyed girls, who drop their balls and begin stampeding towards the sweet fatherly embrace of "The Doc", are about to get him 20 years in prison.

The FCC's phone lines would fuse from the heat.

"Stacy's Mom" is the person your parents always warned you about, the stranger with candy. Carbonated candy. You just have to get in the van. As usual, they're selling soda with sex, only it's not the sex you usually see advertised. Instead of luring you to your nearest grocery by attaching their product to an 18 year-old physical prodigy, Dr. Pepper is selling pop with a sexual metaphor. "Our soda is so good that all the boys will love you." This time they've just taken the word "love" to the next level. The pedophilic level.

Which brings us to a question about humor: why is one of these situations funny, and the other grotesque?

Freud explained the relationship between humor, anxiety, and sex. Madison Avenue, which must sell products to a mass audience, doesn't want to test Freud's point with too much anxiety and too much sex. Offending a mass audience would be counter-productive.

The male/female contradiction gets to the very nature of humor. Showing the flip side of power dynamics is only funny when the power minority winds up on top. We're so accustomed to seeing images of men as physical aggressors and women as physical defenders that it's just not funny to see this paradigm reiterated.

For the same reason that Richard Pryor can make fun of the way that white folks talk, but Jerry Seinfeld can't mock the cadences of the black inner city, it's funny to see a woman as the physical aggressor instead of the physical target. A full grown man chasing after little girls isn't funny because it's just too close to a dangerous truth.

In the end, there is a positive effect to selling soda with humor as opposed to selling it with sex appeal. "Dr. Pepper Seduction" is one of the few ads that doesn't use sexy youth to push product. Our Stacy's mom is cute, but in a motherly way. She's not representative of an unhealthy standard of beauty. In today's ad world, she might be able to sell baked goods, but she's far from breaking into the beer business.

So go ahead, boys. Check out Stacy's mom. She probably has better self-esteem than that waif model in Maxim. And whatever happens, at least you'll get a soft drink out of it.

— Colin Alexander (colin_alexander [at] hotmail [dot] com)