“Manly Diet Sodas.” This is one trend I don’t understand. I just watched a commercial for the new Dr. Pepper drink titled “Dr. Pepper 10” here. This new Dr. Pepper product differs from Diet Dr. Pepper, however, because it has only “ten manly calories.” This makes absolutely no sense to me—how can calories have a gender? And how does adding a mere ten calories giving a diet drink a sex change? This ad stoops so low as to tell its presumably male audience that females can “keep the romantic comedies” while men take on manly missions like the gun toting, jungle adventure the men in the commercial are embarking on. The men in the ad posess a Robert Downey Jr.-esque bravado, and heroically ride through the jungle while telling ladies to back off their “Dr. Pepper 10.”
What does this ad say about the contemporary gender divide? For one, that it’s everywhere. Gendering soda far surpasses Pink Think. Gendering toys and baby clothing may be stereotypical, but at least donning your baby boy in blue is based on societal norms. Gendering soda, however, is simply ludicrous. Even when women did not have the right to vote, they still had the right to drink the same drinks as their male counterparts. When the prohibition was introduced, it was gender neutral. There is no reason that in the 21st Century, the most progressive generation to date, should be regressing to an age where we believe that things as petty and universal as soda belong to either the boys or the girls.
While I understand that to many men, nothing seems inherently girlier than diet soda, there is no soda on the mainstream market that claims it is a soda for women. Men may get teased for drinking Diet Coke or even Diet Dr. Pepper, but adding silver packaging and ten calories won’t change that in the slightest.