Touchdown!

Don’t look now ladies, but here it comes: the biggest advertising day of the year! Ah, yes, the Super Bowl – showcase of the burliest of ads, the fiercest of ads, the most broad shouldered ads wearing the tightest possible pants! Ads for beer and 18-blade sports car-like razors and room-clearing body sprays and tampons!

Tampons?

Well probably not, that’s a little too female-specific. But according to the Canadian Marketing Association blog, this year the advertising heavyweights will be targeting women as well as their traditional male audience.

Advertisers will try to use the mega-event to appeal to the broadest audience possible, even when it comes to products aimed at one gender, age group or other demographic. The Boston Globe reports that Victoria Secret wouldn’t be running their ads for women’s undergarments if they couldn’t also send a nudge-nudge valentines reminder to men. It  “wouldn’t be worth it,” said the marketing head honcho for the company.

No doubt the advertisements will still play on tired gender stereotypes and feature a parade of scantily clad women, but at least they are recognizing (if only in pursuit of profits) that women watch sports too.

Well, not me. I dislike sports, with the obvious exception of duels to the death between my suitors. But I’ll tune in, just to see which wins out: a feeling of inclusion over an attempt to bleed wallets across gender lines, or just my usual sense of insult over the nature of advertising pitches so often demeaning to women and intellectually insulting to us all.

Yep, that’s the only reason I’ll be watching. Oh, and also – you know – to marvel at those tight, tight pants.