Play for Mr. Gray?

We were struck the other day by a couple of new ads for "Just for Men." You're probably aware that this is a hair-coloring product, and, in the past, it has been hawked by such retired sports legends as Keith Hernandez and Walt ("Clyde") Frazier.

In these commercials, Hernandez and Frazier portray sports commentators, watching omnipotently in, say, a singles bar, as a hapless graybeard attempts to ingratiate himself with an unapproachably gorgeous woman. Inevitably, he is shot down. Hernandez and Frazier wince and exclaim, in perfect basketball-play-by-play cadence, "Rejected!" Frazier (presumably providing color commentary) then summarizes what we have just witnessed: "No play for Mr. Gray!" Of course, after hapless graybeard has combed in the JFM miracle formula ("Just five minutes!"), the unapproachable beauty quickly melts into a puddle of pheromones, and the commercial modestly ends.

Now, the Solipsist always found these commercials in, at best, questionable taste. Sure all men, regardless of age or hair color, want to be found attractive by attractive women (or, y'know, men if that's their thing). But we always felt that these commercials, by portraying the men as such pathetic horndogs, were counterproductive. What man, after seeing this commercial, would willingly enter a store, pick up a box of JFM, and go to the counter, knowing (or at least strongly suspecting) that the cashier (who could quite likely BE a young, attractive woman working a part-time job to put herself through college) would, although smiling politely and saying "Will that be all, Sir," be thinking to herself: "Ah! No play for Mr. Gray"?!?

Seriously, buying Depends undergarments would be less embarrassing.

And seeing as how the Solipsist, while having no desire to try the product, is certainly within its target-demographic (i.e., dashingly handsome sophisticates with more than a little salt in their pepper), the good people at Just for Men would seem to have a problem on their hands. Alienating a target-demographic is never a good thing.

Which brings us back to their new commercials: They seem to have gotten this message. Their new commercials are decidedly less raunchy. In one, a man does change his hair color at the suggestion of an attractive young woman--but the woman is about 13 and is his daughter. And she's encouraging him to dye his hair so that he doesn't look too old as he heads out on a job interview. Now THAT's marketing: JFM isn't for aging horndogs; it's for responsible father figures who NEED this product in order to get a job to feed their adorable kids. You see, college-student-working-as-a-cashier-to-earn-tuition-money, I'm a good, responsible provider-type! (So, what are you doing after work? Nudge-nudge, wink wink.)

Not that JFM has abandoned its appeal to men's sex drives. But in another commercial, introducing a new (?) product, a graybeard is encouraged not so much to conceal his gray hair from the fair sex, but simply to modulate it. That's right, this new commercial for "Touch of Gray," suggests that, while there may be no play for Mr. Gray, there may be play for Mr. Some-gray. Good to know. Also good to know that women are not quite as shallow as they had been portrayed in the earlier commercials and that they can apparently find something at least tolerable in gray-haired men.

Good news for George Clooney. We were worried about him.