New 5-Hour Energy Ads Say Men Are Magnificent Athletes, Women Are Poop-Covered Maids

By Lindy West | March 11, 2013 | 9:30pm

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I’m sure you’re all familiar with the good folks over at 5-Hour Energy (assuming you’re the kind of person who’s interested in hours and hours of energy). It’s like the very best stuff to drink if you have four hours of things to do that are one hour away. But did you know that in addition to being energy wizards, the 5-Hour Energy people are also too ad wizards as well too!?!?! Check out their new ad campaign, you sleepy baby koalas!

To make things easy for consumers, 5-Hour Energy carefully tailored their advertisements to each gender. Because, as we all know, men get sleepy like this, but women get sleepy like this! (People who don’t conform to a binary gender construct don’t get sleepy at all. They stride wide-eyed through the night, pouring deviant dream-sand into the ears of good little red state children.)

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Anyway, let’s take a look. Make sure to only watch the commercial for your gender—otherwise you might grow a dong or get addicted to shopahol.

Above, we’ve got the commercial for the fellas.

And here’s what 5-Hour Shenergy does for ladeez:

In case you actually followed my fake instructions and didn’t watch both videos, here’s a quick rundown.

In the dude video—which, as far as I can tell, is compiled from candid iPhone footage filmed inside a tire store—some golf guy and some NASCAR guy sign autographs and bitch at each other about muscles. Basically golf guy is like, “Racecar driving isn’t sports!!! It’s nothing compared to walking slowly in silence and swinging a stick around once every 15 minutes like some sort of modern-day Hercules! (And also somebody else carries your sticks the whole time, like some sort of modern-day Danny DeVito goblin).” And then racecar guy is like, “Nu-uuuuuuhhh, bimbo, because I take 5-Hour Energy when I racecar-drive, which means I can do one-handed push-ups and also I have telekinesis like Matilda with a dick! (Caveat: My telekinesis only applies to pens, so I am literally nothing compared to Matilda and I should be ashamed of myself.)” Not sure what 5-Hour Energy has to do with the legitimacy of driving as a sport, but c’est la vie.

Meanwhile, in Vulvatown, some lady is all yap yap yap:

What did I do with my five hours? Let’s see. I was a dietician, a housekeeper, a pediatrician (yeah, that was a 3rd-degree booboo!), a housekeeper, a sanitation engineer, a housekeeper. Good thing I have 5-Hour Energy to keep me going! [Opens and drinks 5-Hour Energy, suppresses surge of bile.] What will you do with your next five hours?

In case you missed it, “housekeeper” is in there three times—one for each of our dirty shame-holes!

(Also, whoever did the sound on that lady commercial really should have taken their 5-Hour Energy and gone to the store for some lapel mics, because that shit sounds janky.)

So how does the girl commercial differ from the boy commercial? Let’s see.

– Boys have jobs, girls have housework.
– Boys have strength, agility, and mental acuity, girls have babies.
– Boys are famous celebrities who are hounded by adoring fans in tire stores, girls are weary maidservants who are hounded by diapers full of poop in garbage houses.
– Boys drink 5-Hour Energy to do tricks, girls drink 5-Hour Energy to survive the day.

But HERE’S THE ACTUAL THING. Commercials like this don’t really appeal to boys and girls separately—they appeal to all people who are invested in normative gender roles. Men who believe women should be in the kitchen are pleased with commercials that depict women knowing their place. And 5-Hour Energy’s choice of “celebrities” in the boy commercial shows that they know exactly who those people are. They’re conservative NASCAR-loving Real Americans who are all tuckered out from clinging desperately to history all day. And, to be fair, that must be exhausting.