Normally, women are the ones who are poorly represented in Super Bowl ads. These commercials usually present women in one of two roles: as cheesecake (Swedish bikini team, anyone?) or as complaining harpies who stand between men and their fun (think last year’s Mrs. Potato Head).

But while this year had its share of cheesecake, in the form of Megan Fox and the blouse-doffing women of GoDaddy.com, men were the ones who got caricatured into inanity. Advertisers, who for the past few years have been encouraging men to embrace their inner bro, are now telling them to throw in the towel. The fight’s over, guys, they’re saying. The women have won, and all you can do about it is buy yourself a bunch of cool gadgets.

First there was Chrysler’s “Dodge Charger” ad, which features men staring glassy-eyed into the camera as the narrator intones all the things their wives and bosses makes them do. And, in most cases, this ad would have us believe, “wives” and “bosses” are pretty much interchangeable. “I will eat fruit with my breakfast,” the narrator says. “I will sit through two-hour meetings. I will say yes when you want me to say yes. I will carry your lip balm. I will watch your vampire TV shows. I will keep the seat down.” The sole way these pathetic schlubs can retain their masculinity, the ad states, is to buy the car they want to buy, in this case a Dodge Charger.

Then there’s FloTV’s eyeroller, “Injury Report,” in which a guy is mocked for clothes shopping with his girlfriend instead of watching the game. “Change out of that skirt, Jason,” the announcer scolds. How’s Jason to do so? By making a compromise with his girlfriend? By telling her he just plain hates shopping with her, but that there are other things they can do together? No, Jason is advised to take the passive-aggressive way out by buying a miniature TV so he can watch the game wherever he goes! A word to Jason’s girlfriend: Dump him now, or he’ll be watching FloTV at your wedding.

Are men really feeling this emasculated? If so, I don’t think American cars, more TV, and sport-scented body wash are going to help. But most of the guys I know aren’t that defeated. Heck, some of them even enjoy spending time with their wives and girlfriends, and see their jobs and household tasks as responsibilities to live up to, not drains on their vital masculine energy. Back in the day, masculinity used to be defined by responsibility, not buying yourself toys. For a lot of men, it still is, something advertisers need to wake up and realize.

But don’t worry, guys, Dove knows that you still feel “comfortable with your skin” and that you need to celebrate that fact with regular old Dove body wash in a gunmetal gray package Dove for Men! I snark, but the Dove ad actually subtly makes fun of all the “you’re not a REAL MAN unless you do/buy X” commercials out there: It follows a guy from conception to fatherhood through a number of split-second vignettes (climbing the rope in gym class, getting married, mowing the lawn, etc.), while the announcer sings about all the things you’re supposed to accomplish to be a man. “Be tough, be strong, be good at sports,” he says, to the tune of the William Tell Overture. “Don’t show your sensitive side. Go out and have fun with your friends but be a gentleman, too. Check out that noise at night and never be afraid.” The humorous visuals — a nervous husband, armed with a pot, checking out that ‘noise at night,’ a guy getting slapped for ‘not showing his sensitive side’ — subtly poke fun at the list of requirements the narrator sings, and make the point that we’ve seen most of these cliche requirements before, in other ads aimed at men. It’s a fun, self-aware look at how advertisers portray manhood, and it slyly points up the fact that society asks a lot of contradictory things of men. And the relaxed, feel-good tone is much more appealing than that of the insulting Chrysler and FloTV ads.

An Armchair Sociologist’s Field Day

Hulu.com has added a fun feature to its Super Bowl ad videos: you can vote on whether you like each or not, and you can see what other Hulu viewers thought of the ads, too. Hulu also allows you to track the voting on each ad by gender, age group, and location, providing lots of room for speculation. A few observations:

• We’re a nation of saps. The top five ads (at least on 9 PM EST on Monday night) featured a cute kid defending his mother, an international love story (with marriage and baby), more babies, and a dog. Oh, and Betty White getting tackled.
• Men and women chose the same favorite ads, with one glaring exception: Motorola’s Megan Fox-in-a-bathtub ad. Interestingly, a substantial proportion of men disliked this ad, and very few liked the GoDaddy ads at all. Give us more credit! guys seem to be saying.
• And men and women largely disliked the same ads, with the controversial Tim Tebow ad and the annoying Taco Bell and Boost Mobile Shuffle ads coming in among the most hated. The Megan Fox ad was also one of the women’s top 5 disliked. And, giving me hope for the future of this country, one ad everybody detested was the trailer for  that wretched-looking romcom The Backup Plan.

Also Worth Mentioning

• Most memorable ads: Audi, “Green Car.” If Al Gore had been Big Brother, 1984 might have read a lot like Audi’s “Green Car” ad, in which nerdy “Green Police” arrest people for such infractions as failing to compost their fruit peels and requesting plastic bags instead of paper. When the Green Police set up a roadblock, the guy in the “clean diesel”-powered Audi gets to zip right by. At first, this ad seemed counterintuitive: If you drive a hybrid or other green car, you probably worry that other people see you as an eco-Nazi, not that the Green Police are going to bust down your door. The more I thought about it, though, the more sense this ad made. It sends the message that if you buy an Audi, you can absolve yourself of environmental guilt, and safely ignore the Green Police in your life (presumably, your Bobo neighbors or fellow Whole Foods shoppers). The ad’s parody of COPS is pretty funny, too.
• Most memorable ads: In Bridgestone’s “Whale of a Tale,” three guys speed a killer whale to safety, “Free Willy”-style . . . in a station wagon. Two guys pour bottled water over its head to keep it cool, while the driver skids to a stop on a pier, crushing the railings and ejecting the whale into the water. It’s quirky, charming, and it makes the point that Bridgestone tires (supposedly) let you stop on a dime.
• Most memorable ads: Cars.com, “Timothy Richman.” The hero of this ad is a genius who delivers Bengal tiger babies, speaks perfect Italian in junior high, and uses his knowledge of meteorology to rescue a bus full of cheerleaders from a tornado. But, the ad tells us, he’s still nervous about buying a car, so he goes to Cars.com. This ad reassures people that there’s no shame in not knowing much about the car buying process, and does so in a gentle, tongue-in-cheek manner with the spirit of an indie film.
• Worst ads (beside the masculine anxiety ones mentioned above): In “Driven Crazy,” FloTV once again suggests a miniature TV set can solve all your problems. Here a mom ineffectually warns, “Who wants a time out?” as her three kids brat it up in the backseat. One even hits her in the head with a stuffed animal. (Forget time outs; if I had done that to my mom I would have been cleaning for a week!) But does she give them something to read? Shoot them The Look Of Certain Grounding, Or Possibly Death? Actually follow through on her idle threat of a time out? Nah, it’s easier just to shut ‘em up with Spongebob!
• Worst ads: Emerald Nuts and Pop Secret’s spot went for weird for weird’s sake, featuring humans doing dolphin-like tricks for the nuts and popcorn their “trainer” threw. All I could think was, “Wet, chlorine-soaked popcorn. Ew.”
• Worst ads: Vizio, “Forge.” Giant cranes pluck people and objects out of their homes in an ad that evokes an apocalypse in which humanity is enslaved by robots. Even Beyonce looks robotic. Surrender to the machines!
• And, finally, monkeys!