TOESTITOS-their gender ratios were done on purpose!
Even though this commercial is meant to be comical, the fact that the lazy coworkers were all men, and the only one who was at work was a women, was not a coincidence. In fact, it actually very accurately captures the work place and the roles that men and women play. Traditionally commericals advertise a product in a manner that society will be most able to relate to. The woman is being depicted has the only working employee, compared to her other co-workers who are eating toestitos chips. This demonstrates that in reality such instances of the women working harder and having less privileges and leeway, not to mention pay, occurs quite often. Such a huge gap between the accepted amount of work done by men and women is the direct effect of most of society haveing a mentality that men and women MUST play the dominant and submissive roles. Even though pornography is not the first description that would come to mind, it is being visualized in this commerical. Pornography is not limited to only sexual content, in fact it is a state of mind :
"Pornography, as i am using the term, is just that, a worldview,a way of thinking and acting that sexualizes and genders domination and submission, from the bedroom to the war room, making domination masculine ( even when a female plays that role) and submission feminine( even when a man plays that role), and making both the essence of sex."(Caputi75).
Using Caputis definition of pornography and the current male domineering mentality of the vast public, it is easy to make the connection as to why a woman was the working employee and the three men were the lazy co-workers, that she was sub-consciously in servitude of. I doubt that if the commerical had the genders playing opposite roles ( three women acting as lazy co-workers and one man working away) would have had the same product selling effect. Actually, i believe that because "gender domination and submission" has been so normalized, the result of the three women as the lazy co-workers would have sent a negative message also. To elaborate, most of society would not buy the toestitos chips because the women eating them would not be seen as contributing to the company, where in contrast the men were seen as contributing even though they lacked to do work. Obviously, the factor that is altering people perception and the message they receive from the commerical is weather the dominant role is played by men (in which they buy the tostitos) or if it is played by women( in which they would not buy the tostitos). It is just another example of how media normalized, almost comically, the submission of women, and men maintaining their dominance.