Get Your Girl On

New Hummer H3 ad goes like this:

Soccer Mom and son waiting on line; second kid jumps line; Soccer Mom says, "Johnny was next," and line-jumper's mom responds, a la schoolyard bully, "Now my son is next."

So Soccer Mom goes out, buys a big-ass SUV, and drives around smiling and feeling powerful, with little Johnny strapped in beside her. The closing tagline is "Get Your Girl On."

What does this ad tell us? Hmm. That some kids are bullies, and so are their moms -- but we already knew that. That SUVs are bascially chickmobiles -- we knew that, too, ever since Marge Simpson got her Canonero. But mostly, it tells us that we can drop even the pretense that luxury trucks are a hairy-chested he-man thing. Hummer doesn't even bother with that, and why should they? Nobody believed it anyway.

Watching the ad, I wanted nothing more than to run out and buy the smallest, most sensible car I could find -- a Prius, a SmartCar, anything -- just to prove that I wasn't an insecure, bullying, Hummer-driving woman. (Okay, I did allow that a sporty little 60s roadster would do the job -- something in an MG-B or a Karmann Ghia.) I wanted to shout, "I'm a man, dammit -- and I'm secure enough in my mascilinity to drive a small car."

And as for Arnold "Hummer-Enthusiast" Schwarzenegger, we ask: Who's the girly-man now, Arnie?