I swear there are days when I just wanna smack the backs of the heads of advertising execs who seem to be perpetually stuck in the 1950’s when it comes to TV commercials and marketing products. Have you noticed this? I bet if you watch enough TV you cannot fail to notice the staggering amount of ads for cleaning products that are literally ONLY marketed to women. Have you EVER seen a bathroom cleaner commercial with a guy? Heck no. How about an ad for laundry detergent? Not a chance.

Now let me ask you another question: in the year 2013, can you count on even one hand the amount of guys you know who DON’T do their own laundry?

How about the car commercials. Anyone ever see one that features a female? I mean one that didn’t give us a mom with three kids buying a mini-van. Because apparently the only cars women buy are mini-vans. Seriously, I am going to watch a bunch of TV tonight and see if I can find one single car ad that caters to anyone other than a dad leaving for work in the morning waving goodbye to his beautiful wife after she has handed him his cup of coffee on the porch of their perfect little house with a white picket fence.

And that’s another thing. The houses. Does no one who cooks, cleans or drives a car in TV commercial land live in an apartment? For that matter does a family exist that doesn’t consist of mom, dad and two kids in a suburban house all sitting down to eat dinner at a kitchen table without TV and cell phones served hand and foot by mom??? Seriously friends when was the last time that happened at your place?

Both of my brothers have been cooking their own food since they were teenagers. There are times where I have called one or the other of them to ask how to cook something. They both run the washing machine and I know they have both washed dishes, cleaned toilets and changed diapers without making a mess. Look my dad likes to pretend he doesn’t know how to cook, but he does. And he is definitely one of those guys who wouldn’t know a bathroom cleaner or laundry detergent if his life depended on it. But he is also over 60. Any man under 50 who can’t cook for themselves? I don’t know any.

But happy joyous TV-land would have you believe that moms are the only people who deal with ovens, bathrooms, potty training, sponges and garbage bags. And the only time you will EVER see a man cook is if he is standing around the grille with a beer in his hand having just finished mowing the lawn – something only HE is able to do.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a car commercial recently from Honda that featured an African-American salesman. That was new and fairly refreshing I thought, because I am pretty sure I had never seen anyone but a white male car salesman before. (To be fair, I have never seen anyone other than a white male car salesman in real life either but that’s besides the point.)

What world are these TV ad people living in? Hell, what year are they living in?

Once, just once I want to see a commercial with a dad cleaning a toilet! I would kill to see a middle age single female buying a sports car. Or how about the kids cooking their own food in an apartment cause one or both of their parents are still WORKING!!

It’s insulting, it’s boring and uncreative and it’s completely and totally unrealistic! There are no single people in these commercials. There are certainly no single parent families or any other families with any other structure than the one that somebody high up in the ad exec world thinks we are supposed to have.

I would like to think we can handle more than this by now. I mean if the clothing industry can manage to create ads featuring same-sex couples why the hell can’t the makers of Hamburger Helper give me a 30-second spot with a guy standing over a stove?