Sorry it’s been so long between my posts. I’m just glad I have three co-bloggers to pick up the slack during my busy times. In any case, I’m back with a brief post here and another one hopefully ready to go before this week is up.
As documented in detail here, I have long had a problem with Carl’s Jr.’s marketing campaigns. One of my biggest gripes has centered on their portrayal of men as useless Neanderthals who can’t manage to comprehend simple concepts (like the fact that you can buy raw ground beef at a market and cook it instead of just poking at it like a moron). Well sadly, Carl’s Jr. isn’t the only place where men get painted in a bad light. In fact, there’s an entire industry that thinks in a very similar way: the greeting card industry.
My lovely wife and I had an anniversary a couple of weeks ago. Several days before that, I went to a store to buy a card. Sure enough, there was a section devoted to anniversary cards and a good number of tabs indicating cards designed for a wife. I flipped through all of them and was sadly reminded of the same problem I’ve faced for every anniversary and Valentine’s Day since we got married. Apparently, men are unfeeling dolts who lack the ability to string two words together. I somehow missed that memo. The subtext is the same in the all of the cards: “I can’t express my love for you in writing and should probably say nice things more often, so here’s a card to help me out.” I’m completely serious; check this section out next time you’re in a card store and you’ll see what I mean. “Sometimes I forget to tell you all of the wonderful things you are to me,” one will start. “Life has a way of getting pushing the important little things to the side,” says another. I can’t tell if some of them are for anniversaries or for some unmarked section called “Let Me Try a Few of the Things the Therapist Suggested Before We Try a Separation.” I kept waiting for the next one to start with, “I’m sorry you found that stripper’s number in my cell phone…” One after another, the cards with tri-folded, glittery monstrosities with paragraphs (or even worse, stanzas) of text. I wanted something with one or two general lines and space for me to write the things that I actually wanted to say to my specific wife.
After getting increasingly frustrated, I took the least of the evils (one with not too much text and nothing that had me apologizing for not saying the things I actually say) and sought out a section of blank cards. My thought was that I could find something with a pretty picture and do the rest myself, but I couldn’t find any blank ones. I don’t know if I was a bad searcher, if this was a store with a particularly poor selection, or if blank cards are no longer made because card companies find that everyone needs their help now. I contemplated finding an anniversary card for a husband and crossing the inappropriate words out, but instead went with the one in my hand which worked just fine.
I realize that I’m not the typical man when it comes to expressing myself through words, but there have to be more of us than the greeting card industry estimates. All they’re doing is exacerbating the problem. If more and more men don’t have to learn how to use their words to express such complicated thoughts as “I love you” and “Happy Anniversary,” then there will never be a need for them to try. And ladies, wouldn’t it mean a hell of a lot more to picture your husbands with a pen, a blank card, and an expression that denotes some level of thought instead of some flowery language that some corporation thinks is what you want to read? Who knows, maybe I’m overestimating my fellow man and the end result would be a lot of cards that say, “Happy Aniversry. Its like our weddings birthday or sumthing.” And if that’s the case, then I’m afraid Carl’s Jr. has already won. God help us all.