I used to find this mildly annoying. I thought that surely our society is sufficiently advanced that we might accept roughly equal occurrences of each gender as the goats in these commercials without it seeming disparaging to women.
But thinking this made me realize: having men as the goats is not disparaging to men, either. Now I choose to attribute the phenomenon to the conventional wisdom that men are generally less self-conscious than women. I believe there is some anecdotal evidence for this but have no idea whether it is actually true. What I do believe is that marketers perceive this to be the case and making commercials that make men look stupid will alienate fewer people in the audience, since humiliating somebody that a male viewer identifies with is, theoretically, less disquieting.
The same applies to sitcoms and movies.
The commercials say a lot more about women than they do about men.
Watching the commercials, it's hard to deny that a lot of women must like feeling superior to men, and that feeling will eventually cause them to buy a product.
Why this patronizing and sexist tactic works on anyone but a 13-year-old girl is a mystery to me, but it does. I guess it's the female equivalent of the dumb college buddy movie and beer commerical.
Ads targeted to men are just as, if not more, patronizing and sexist. One wouldn't think they would work on males older than 13 years old, but they apparently do.
Fuck off. Maybe it's just that advertising is mostly patronizing. Sad for their industry, really... Why not learn how to relate to people?
Selling to women? -Men are morons who can't understand this product like you can. -These women are better than you because they consume this product
Selling to men? -Women are items to be acquired through the use of this product. -These men are better than you because they use this product (or in the case of the Miller Light ad, "Here's what you look like when you don't drink Miller Light.")
The next time you see a commercial that makes use of gender roles, swap the genders and see if the commercial would still be suitable. Most don't hold up to this scrutiny.