Over the past year I’ve been noticing a new advertising trend. Let’s see if you can spot it:

1. In a UK Ferraro Rocher commercial, a man at a swanky dinner party asks his wife to go get the chocolates from the kitchen. She goes in but wants to keep all the chocs for herself, so she returns with coffee, and then cognac, and her husband gets more and more exasperated, and he’s like, “The chocolates!” And she’s all, “Okaaaay.” And she brings them out and everybody digs in and she’s all upset and like, “Don’t eat them all! Teehee!”
2. In an Australian “Persuasions” commercial, we see a young woman in close-up reluctantly accepting one of the chocolates. She eats it and it’s delicious. “Oh thank you!” she says. “Another one? Oh, I couldn’t. Well… okay!” And the camera’s slowly pulling out, and suddenly we see she’s standing in her living room alone talking to herself surrounded by dozens of candy wrappers on the floor.
3. In another Aussie commercial, this one for some gourmet chocolates, a little old lady comes to visit her friend. Her friend is happy to see that she’s carrying a big box of the chocolates. They have tea together, and the friend keeps reaching for the box, but the other old lady never offers it. Finally they say goodbye and the visitor leaves, still clutching her box of chocolates. She smiles as her friend looks disappointed in the background. The catchphrase: “Too good to share.”

Did you see the pattern? The one where we women are irrational, chocolate loving, childlike insane freaks? Don’t you find that a trifle insulting? The worst part is, every guy I’ve mentioned this to (mostly Snookums and his friends) are like: “Aren’t most women really like that?” Grrrr. It’s like there’s this regression, where we’re heading back to Freud’s vision of women as hysterical creatures of repression and hormones. I can’t even really explain how degrading I find that. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s just a few commercials. But it’s obviously infiltrating the psyches of a lot of guys who should know better.