It’s the beginning of the year, a new decade, and I’m doing my damnedest to try and stay positive.  But it’s dark all the time.  And cold.  So freakin’ cold.  My house isn’t surrounded with snow drifts as much as BERGS of dirty, frozen snow.  My skin’s dry, I don’t have a tan, and yes, I did plump up over the holidays.  Did I mention the cold?

And then the work.  The economy still sucks, health care reform is a mess, and I’m suffering from progressives fatigue.   When I collect myself to focus on something so very critical like continuing to advocate for equal access to health care services, or equal pay for equal work, I find some strength in the amazing community of advocates all working toward the same goal.  As cheesy as it sounds it makes it seem doable, despite the claustrophobia that being surrounded by dirty frozen snowbergs can bring.

Until something like this.  Pants that have captured the attention and collective outrage of feminists.  Well, that just makes me tired.

Okay.  I get it.  It’s a macho-styled play on culturally ingrained and at times offensive gender stereotypes.  Its cheeky  elevation of  pedestrian manliness anticipated this feminist outrage because, well, it jabs at it outright.  So, well played, ladies.  We’ve done exactly what the stereotype predicted we’d do.  Jokes on who exactly?

Now, for transparency’s sake I’ll disclose that I know one of the folks involved in the campaign.  Sure, I’ll admit that I find some of the assumptions in the campaign worn, but um… yeah, they’re selling Dockers.  Hard to get more mainstream than khaki, so those kinds of assumptions are going to work.  And they have.  We’re talking about Dockers.  I’ve dedicated an entire post to Dockers.  When was the last time you even THOUGHT about Dockers, let alone got your panties in a bunch over their ads?

With so many big issues, so many real battles who has the energy for this?  I fight against gender assumptions and the damage they inflict daily.  It’s a personal fight and a professional fight.  But pants?  I’m not fighting pants, if only to not feed into the humorless boner-killing feminist meme that the campaign depends on.  I get it for those who want to take it on.  But me, I can’t.  It’s great advertising–it taps into a collective nerve and exploits it, for good or for bad.  It’s sparked a political conversation which is pretty amazing in and of itself.  But even if I’m offended by the ad, so what?  Harping about it does what exactly?

This country’s cultural identity is inextricably linked to this kind of theme.  Colonists rebelled against the effeminite Brits.  Pioneers, miners, railroaders, all did the same from the Colonists.  This is our historical narrative, the language of Americana.  Why do we think this will ever change?  At best it will become an antiquated cultural marker of a particular moment in our nation’s development, but it will persist.  Manhood is the most ingrained and illusive piece of Americana, and perhaps the fact that it’s now selling pants is a sign it’s on the wane.  Or not.  But at the end of the day, it’s just pants people.  What’s all the fuss?

Either I just don’t see it or I’m too tired and can’t see it, but I’m missing something.  Really?  Pants?