GNC Corp., What's Your Goal?
Targeting New Year's resolution makers, text for vitamin retailer General Nutrition Centers floats over people in a park, with their various answers to the question, "What's your goal?"
Included are benign things like "increase my energy" (a woman trying to keep up with her dog on a leash) and "climb a mountain" over the people. As a humorous "mixup" effort to see if viewers are paying attention, an athletic man's text reads "fit into that little black dress," while the text for the woman next to him says, "bench 450 pounds." They both look down, puzzled at their goals, then he comically bench presses her by switching sides and trading goal texts.
The tagline of this $40 million campaign, "Live well."
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User Comments
Karl
I don't find the commercial offensive, but I don't see how it creates equality or makes homosexuality a non-issue. Actually it pokes fun of it by suggesting something is wrong with the man's goal being to fit in a black dress.
Dave
As a male who wears skirts and dresses, I strongly feel that it is my right as a male to do so. I am very offended by this GNC commercial. Along with GNC's inference that there's something "wrong" with any male wanting to wear a dress. I believe it should be my right as a male to be athletic, into weightlifting, and yet, be able to wear dresses if I want. Of course, a woman should be able to want to bench 450 pounds too, but no one has any problem with women doing that and being feminine at the same time. In fact, many women nowadays do so and yet ARE thought of as feminine. I think a man should be able to wear a dress and yet be macho and athletic, and wearing a dress shouldn't be thought of as "taking away from" or "compromising" his masculinity. When I saw this commercial I really felt like I was slapped in the face by GNC, and I felt slapped in the face again just now by your web site praising this commercial. I feel this commercial was very insensitive specifically toward M2F transgender persons. I, for one, will no longer buy products from or do business with GNC because of this commercial! I'm sorry, but I just don't agree with you that this commercial promotes equality of transgender persons, and a man wearing, or wanting to wear, a dress does not make him gay. I myself am heterosexual, and this commercial, to me, just seems to promote traditional gender roles.
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