too cynical, or not cynical enough?

[rone]

The Iron Man 2 Dr Pepper limited edition cans feature Tony "Iron Man" Stark and Ivan "Whiplash" Vanko on the regular Dr Pepper cans, and Pepper Potts and the Black Widow on the Diet Dr Pepper cans.

[Poll #1577122]

Comments

[xythen.livejournal.com]

Because, since the beginning of consumerism, women have been pushed to conform to impossible standards of beauty... long before soda was the gleam in any ad executive's eye.

[zeborah]

Right. And of course this soda illustration didn't cause that, let alone all by itself; but it uses and benefits from it, and it plays into maintaining it.

[xythen.livejournal.com]

ehh...It's a business. If women, all of a sudden, stopped being a large consumer of diet soda, I guarantee you, whatever they wanted instead, would be the primary focus of the black widow/Potts ad gimmicks.
To be some vast, oppressive conspiracy trying to keep women down, at this point, would mean they would offer nothing but diet soda, no matter what the consumer wanted. No one who wanted to stay in business would do that.

[zeborah]

To be some vast, oppressive conspiracy trying to keep women down, at this point, would mean they would offer nothing but diet soda, no matter what the consumer wanted.

That'd be silly: then what would men drink? They've got to offer products for both genders to maximise their profits; all they need to do is make it very clear which product is appropriate for which gender. You can't actually refuse to sell one gender the wrong one, because you'd get in trouble with the law, but you can certainly use subtle (and not-so-subtle) cues to build up the fact that most men don't want to be seen as girly and most women want to make themselves conventionally attractive.

--But no, I doubt they're literally colluding with the International Association of Patriarchs, with secret passwords and all. But if it was a coincidence, then you'd expect the coincidence to go the other way approximately 50% of the time, and I... I'd be pretty surprised if it went the other way even 5% of the time.

So my vote's with "vast, oppressive agreement-to-go-with-the-flow which is quite happy for women to be kept down as long as they get to keep making a profit off of it". Which is just as oppressive in effect if not intent, plus also cowardly.

[(Anonymous)]

In fairness, women (on average) should consume fewer calories per day than men. Men are taller and a much larger fraction of their body is muscle mass, yielding a higher resting metabolism (again, on average). Furthermore, overweight men lose fat more easily than overweight women (on average).

In other words, their are entirely legitimate reasons for women (on average) to prefer lower-calorie products than men.

That said, I agree that women are pushed to impossible standards of beauty.

[epileptikitty.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly certain soda existed at the dawn of consumerism.

In facet plain soda water started in the mid 1700s (Schweppes I think). The pubkeepers stored it upright and the fizz got out of the dry corks. The company changed the bottles to have rounded bottoms so they had to be stored on their sides.

<a href="http://www.drpeppersnapplegroup.com/brands/schweppes/>http://www.drpeppersnapplegroup.com/brands/schweppes/</a>