Dr. Pepper 10: "It's Not For Women"

How does a soft drink company create a “diet” soda for its customers? By alienating half of them, that’s how! In 2011, Dr. Pepper released a new version of their drink named Dr. Pepper 10. The ten stands for the number of calories the drink has. Because the brand already makes Diet Dr. Pepper, the new soda was aimed specifically at men. However, the company’s research found that "men shy away from diet drinks that aren’t perceived as ‘manly’ enough.” To combat their customers’ prejudices, the company released commercials that proclaimed that Dr. Pepper 10 was “Not For Women.”

The commercial shows a movie where a muscular macho-man runs through a jungle shooting at unknown bad guys while drinking Dr. Pepper 10 and talking to a female audience member. He tells her that his movie is too rough and violent. The movie is not for her and neither is the drink. Most advertisements are more subtle in their bias toward male viewers by having explosions or beautiful women without explicitly stating. The commercial broke the fourth wall and used meta jokes to attempt to connect to male viewers. However, it ends up being slightly sexist in its attempt to corral male viewers. It also states that if men don’t like action movies or the drink then they are women.

It is also interesting that a company believes that men would not buy a soda for the potential hazard of being made fun of for drinking a “feminine” soda. If that is true then that presents another example of culture restricting the usage of an item by men because it is deemed “not manly enough”. Another example would be wearing pink clothing. The only reason most men don’t wear that color is because of the gender affiliations placed on it by society. As mentioned in another post, it appears that masculinity is relative to the present hegemony because if opinions can be changed by culture then it is ideology, and not biology, that keeps the invisible tough guy version of masculinity going.