By now, you’ve probably seen the much-maligned “Love Hurts” Pepsi Max commercial. If not, feast your eyes on the FAIL:

If you can’t or won’t watch it, here’s the run down: the feminine half of a Black married couple that looks to be in their late 30′s goes through great lengths to prevent her husband from eating anything unhealthy. She kicks him to stop him from ordering french fries at a restaurant, slams his face into a pie and replaces the burger he sneaks into the shower to eat with a bar of soap. At the end, he’s scared when he sees her approaching him on a park bench as he attempts to enjoy a Pepsi Max…only to see that she smiles at him, holds up her own can and reminds him that the diet soda has zero calories. Finally, he has managed to please his evil, emasculating wife! But wait…then, a “hot” blonde in a tiny jogging outfit sits next to him on the bench, waves and him and smiles flirtatiously. He smiles back and his evil wife hurls her can at him. He ducks and the Pepsi Max knocks the poor White girl off the bench. The couple has an “Oh sh*t!” moment, grabs hands and runs away before they get in trouble; the wife squeaks out an “I’m sorry!” in a high pitched voice that doesn’t seem to fit the dungeon dragon persona she’s had for the duration of the commercial.

Le sigh.

Let’s talk about the actors couple for a second. The husband is bald, sturdy and marginally attractive. Definitely not a Boris Kodjoe, through he’s about the same complexion and has a similar beard and goatee look. I’d say the wife is very pretty, aside from an unfortunate looking weave. She’s also darker and heavier than most of the women we see in print or TV ads (unless they are “big” women, such as the stars of the Pine-Sol and Popeye’s commercials). If I had to guess, I’d say she was a plus model (somewhere around the size 10-12 range; remember: most plus models aren’t actually plus sized). However, it’s very clear that she isn’t supposed to be a “hot” or beautiful wife- the juxtaposition of her and the pretty blonde makes that very clear.

The commercial is offensive on a number of levels. The sister is the classic, ball-busting TV wife with sassy Black attitude piled on top and as Jezebel’s Irin points out, there is some rumbling that she may have been inspired by the current FLOTUS, who has made the anti-obesity movement her signature cause. Clair Huxtable famously policed her husband’s eating habits for the entire eight year run of The Cosby Show (remember the sandwich dream?), but she was never downright mean or violent. She was, in so many ways, the idyllic TV mother (though very much a “sista” through and through). A nod to her or to her ways of checking her hubby’s food intake wouldn’t have garnered the big laughs that relying on hackneyed stereotypes of wives and Black women (and, to some extent, some Black men’s attraction to White women and vice versa) was intended to achieve.

This commercial is made offensive by the fact that we’d NEVER see a “hot” Black woman dangled in front of a White man in a way designed to shame or embarrass his White wife…by the fact that we do not often enough see Black women (particularly darker complexioned and/or not thin ones) in commercials with speaking roles that don’t sound “sassy”…that the relationship between Black men and women is sometimes uncomfortable and that the interracial attraction issue is not something that many of us are comfortable enough to see used as a site gag, particularly when the joke is on the Black woman (“Look at your wide-hipped mean ass, and then look at this hot blonde!”) The ‘man wants junk food, wife insists upon mothering him and forcing him to eat healthy’ joke is somewhat overused, as well (though I will admit that I am guilty of doing food replacements and mini-lectures about diet with my S.O. myself. If wanting him to eat healthier is wrong, I’m just not gonna be right. Ironically, the number one bad diet habit he chides me for is my love of diet soda), but there were many ways to play even that old tune without relying on these tired ethnic and gender stereotypes. While the ABW trope is so common, that its presence in the spot didn’t shock me at all, the blonde at the end took the commercial to a whole new level of offensive.

Yes, there are mean, sassy Black women who exist, just as their are crass and emasculating White women AND sisters who behave far more like June Cleaver than the average White suburbanite on her best day. And yes, certain behaviors, speech patterns and mannerisms are cultural; while not all Black women are mean or sassy, the ‘sister girl’ attitude that we see so often in the media was not created by Hollywood. But it has been so often taken out of context, exaggerated or been used as if it is the only shade of Black female that exists. I don’t believe that Black women are, by and large, so much more angry or mean on a regular basis than other women or men. I encounter terrible attitudes from people of other race and gender groups often enough to eschew the constant media suggestion that we are just the worst thing out on the streets. And you know what? It shouldn’t be hard for folks to understand why Black women may not be as cheerful and easy going as women of other groups allegedly are. Why? Because we aren’t simply the ‘mules of the Earth’ (word to Zora), but we are so often the laughing stock of the planet. If Black women are, in fact, constantly upset compared to other women, I’d chalk that up as a reaction to how they’ve been treated. We don’t pop out the womb with a screw face; the world provides the fodder for that a little later. Being constantly maligned and derided, having our looks marginalized (in this case, by juxtaposing them with the White feminine “ideal” before a Black man to show how much less appealing we are) and existing as one of the most misunderstood groups of people in the world is certainly a recipe to make a woman go mad…or angry.

But guess what? MOST of us are NOT constantly walking around being mean or sassy or emasculating! The same way that the average White woman doesn’t HARDLY resemble the woman who popped up at the end of the commercial. Somehow, for all the material that we have to make us downright, all the way crazy and evil, most of us manage to be normal, functioning members of society. But Hollywood, certain low-rent comedians, a handful of particularly hateful men and an unfortunate number of people of all creeds and colors who aren’t wise enough to see beyond what they have been sold  would have you believe otherwise.

Let Pepsi know if you’d like to see that commercial stop airing:

Media Relations:
pepsicomediarelations@pepsi.com
mediarelations@pepsi.com

Consumer Response Team:
http://www.pepsico.com/Contacts.html