For decades, scientists, business owners, and athletes have been advocating for people to switch to meatless diets to reduce our carbon footprint. Yet, they struggle to overcome the cultural relationship between meat-eating and masculinity in the United States. Recently, vegetarian companies like Impossible Burger have tried to reclaim the idea of masculinity through pointed commercials. In a commercial premiered this year, the ad starts with a man looking straight at the camera.
"He’s tall and muscular, with broad shoulders. 'Like a dad from a 1970s barbecue,” says Gabriel Rosenberg, professor of gender studies at Duke University. 'He's got this great mustache.'
'Listen up, America,' the man in the ad says. 'Meat has problems. And it’s gonna take us — meat-eaters — to solve them.'
The man slaps away a beef burger, swipes away meatballs, and hands out plant-based meat alternatives. He gets on a motorcycle, puts on a helmet, vrooms the engine, and bursts through a wall, driving off into the horizon.
'He's this older figure of masculinity. He's teaching you how to be a man. And then he's explosively virile,' Rosenberg says. 'It's basically saying: Men, you have permission to eat our product and still be manly.’”
Gender, Sexuality Feminist Studies
