Was it just me or did it seem like advertisers at this year’s Superbowl seem to think that men are having some kind of crisis in this country. So many ads this year had some kind of “this is what a man is” theme, it was a bit disturbing.

There were ads that were mostly just funny: men who are hungry play like little old ladies (Snickers) to ads that were downright misogynistic: tires should be more important than wives (Bridgestone), but the two ads that really got to me were the ones that seemed to be saying that men need to recapture something that they’ve lost, something that apparently women have taken from them.

Dockers aired a “no pants” add, with a bunch of men running around in a field with no pants. They looked goofy, you saw somewhat unflattering shots of them from behind, and they were very nearly frolicking -- not very manly things. At the end of the ad, the tag-line “wear the pants” appears with a very manly looking dude wearing his Dockers pants, standing boldly next to the tag-line. Is Dockers simply issuing a command, or are they also trying to remind us of the phrase “who wears the pants in the relationship” and hinting that men have lost this power, that they’ve given it over to women. It’s just vague enough that you can’t quite be sure but I have my guesses.

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In case you haven’t heard the news, an abstinence-only sex education program was found to be effective. This is the first time a rigorous study has found any abstinence-only program to have long-lasting, measurable effects. The authors were quick to point out that this is only one study and no policies should be based on it, but I have a feeling that the abstinence-only folks are jumping up and down with joy.

Before they hurt themselves, however, it’s important to take a closer look at the curriculum used in this research. Besides advocating waiting to have sex, this curriculum couldn’t be farther from what most abstinence-only curriculum teaches. Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy pointed out that this curriculum, as opposed to most abstinence-only curriculum “did not advocate abstinence until marriage. The classes also did not portray sex negatively or suggest that condoms are ineffective, and contained only medically accurate information”.

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