First rant of 2009!
Happy New Year! And Christine the Curmudgeon is indeed getting 2009 off to a curmudgeonly start.
Today’s rant is about the latest Jimmy Dean commercial…you can see it here. Warning – it auto-plays, which is why I didn’t just embed it here. I don’t like embedding auto-play stuff on my sites.
This ad is the latest in the series starring the dude in the big sun suit. I think the concept is cute, having the sun, moon, clouds, etc all working in a high-rise building. There was one commercial where they had an eclipse, and the Sun was having such a nice time chatting with the Moon, that he asked his secretary to schedule another eclipe for tomorrow.
Anyhoo, the Sun is always getting his co-workers to eat Jimmy Dean products, as they always seem to cure whatever ails them.
This new ad introduces a new female *weather* character, the Rainbow. She’s supposed to come out after a rainstorm, but shows up for work with no color. Of course, the Sun wants to take her into the break room and zap up a Jimmy Dean breakfast sammich for her.
At first she refuses, because she’s on some sort of “cereal diet”. But fear not, the Sun whips out a package of a new Jimmy Dean product called “D-Lites”, which basically are lower-fat/calorie breakfast sammiches. Sun nukes one up for her, Rainbow eats it, and her color is back again.
It’s a cute ad, but what annoys me is that it perpetuates the myth that only women go on diets, and that ALL women are on diets. I mean, I don’t think they ever had a female *weather* character before, they bring one on, and they want to portray her as a stereotypical weight-obsessed woman. As far as I remember, the only female characters who were shown eating full-fat Jimmy Dean products were the Sun’s two daughters…in the early ads, they focused on the Sun’s home life, he has a regular human wife and the two regular human daughters. How he fathered two kids, I don’t know…I’d think that would BURN, if you get my drift! 
Mrs. Sun was never shown eating anything, she was just cooking it for Mr. Sun and the kids. The only other female character is the secretary, and she wasn’t eating anything, either.
Well, I’m a woman (last time I checked), and I happen to like the regular Jimmy Dean breakfast sammiches. They are tasty, and very quick if you need breakfast on the go. And I know that there are MEN who are looking to cut down on fat and calories, they would also be customers for the low-fat sammiches.
It would be nice if they could show a female character (other than children) eating the regular products, and a man eating the low-fat ones. I know it’s only a commercial, but still…I tend to get annoyed by sexist stuff in ads.
Still, I enjoy the ads, and will continue to buy the products. There are plenty of other commercials that annoy me far more than this one does!
