A TV commercial that offends me

There is a commercial that runs on my local television stations that has troubled me since the first time I saw it. It is an ad for a well-known car dealership in a nearby state, only this ad is for the dealership's motorized wheelchair sales. (I know that sounds odd, but this is a really successful and ambitious dealership.) The dealership's folksy/campy commercials usually make me smile in spite of myself, but this one does not.

A man tells the story of trying to buy a motorized wheelchair and the company did not return his call. By the time someone did return it, he had already gotten a chair from the car dealership. Then he says, while scooting jauntingly in his new chair, "What little manhood I have left, I want to keep. _____'s has the coolest chair in town."

By equating manhood with physical wholeness, the commercial buys into the stereotype of what a "real man" is. Can you imagine the spot with a woman saying "What little womanhood I have left, I want to keep"? Of course you can't, because womanhood (much less the word "woman") is not a concept in the consciousness of American culture. This is not to say that a woman isn't judged by her physical appearance because she certainly is. But she is not judged by her physical wholeness the way that a man is.

It is a sad thing to lose physical functioning, but it is even worse to be told you have also lost your "manhood."