Aww Bless!

When he is ill and you don't have time to be get cold and flu remedies from Boots!

This photograph is taken from the hilarious Boots the Chemist television advertisement. It lasts just 30 seconds and it has two women  friends meeting in the high street, both with streaming colds, sharing tales of all the jobs they have to do. One has a bag of cold and flu remedies from Boots the Chemist for her husband who is poorly in bed with manflu - 'awww bless', adds her friend very sympathetically. Clearly Boots don't aim their advertsing at men as this is from a series of mildly sexist television promotions making a similar point. They are implying that men are faking illnesses while women carry on regardless. It would be churlish not to find the advert amusing - it certainly makes me smile.

However I have seen parallels in the last two days when two football television presenters have got into trouble for making sexist comments about a female referee; they questioned, amongst other things, whether she could possibly understand the off-side rule. This photograph has been doing the rounds on Facebook and Twitter:

No comment.

And then there was this one:

All this is based on stereotypes: women don't get football, and men don't know what being ill means. At one level they are harmless and have formed a rich vein of humour for years. Yet deeper down they cause real harm; women should be involved in football at every level. In fact Sian Massey does know the off-side rule as was so brilliantly shown by her split second decision in the Wolves v Liverpool game last weekend. More importantly though, men's health should be taken seriously, not mocked by Boots the Chemist. The awful fact is that men are far more likely to have undiagnosed cancer, depression, or diabetes than women.

The stereotypical view that women bravely soldier on while men take to their beds has no foundation in fact; it is no more true than female ignorance of the off-side rule.