Get Caught Playing this Damned Fool’s Game
The sexual tension was thick. I’ve got a learning disorder which makes it hard for me to understand non verbal cues, and even I could see it. It makes the whole thing kind of hard to watch. But then, Isaiah Mustafa has made a post-football career out of over the top machismo.
Interestingly, he’s not on this show in his role as “Old Spice Guy”, but rather as a spokesmanly-man for (near as I can tell) Microsoft. This means that he’s not in his highly scripted parody of dadaist masculinity. Rather, this is Isaiah himself. Selling a product. And that’s where he sets his foot in it.
Old Spice Guy probably shouldn’t have said, “And now something for you guys” and then talked about XBL. Girl gamers don’t exist, right? – @ashelia
Yeah, he did that. We can argue statistics all day. He was shilling for Xbox when he said that, and more men that women use that platform. Or, we could just say that there are more female gamers than male gamers, and so he’s statistically wrong. That’s not what he said, though. At best he strongly implied that there simply aren’t women who game. At worst, he looked them in the eye an shoved them aside. So: Isaiah, meet Ashelia. She’s kind of hardcore. In fact, if you want to sell a phone that lets gamers earn Xbox achievements… don’t talk to me. Talk to her– she’s your audience.
Except he can’t talk to her. He can’t sell to her. He can’t sell to her friends or women like her. He just said that she doesn’t exist. He just told women like her that they don’t exist. He did that, while taking a break from flirting with the only woman on the show. And the only interactions he has with that woman are flirtatious ones. Take home lesson: women don’t (or shouldn’t) game. Women exist to be flirted with.
Remember when we talked about StarCraft racism? This is an example of that. I won’t make the claim that Isaiah Mustafa is sexist. I won’t even say that Microsoft is institutionally sexist. I will say, though, that he did something incredibly sexist, and he did it in the name of a very large corporation. Microsoft should probably fix that.
I’m gonna say one more thing before I get the hell out of here. Ashelia doesn’t need me to defend her. She did that herself, and quite well. She’s got a much larger audience on twitter than I do on this blog. And yet her twitter account and my blog have wildly different audiences. And so it’s worth me saying a few words alongside her, sort of off to her left. Agree? Disagree? Comment section is open…
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Eh . . . I’m pretty sure he was playing a character for that interview. I’m going to contradict you and say that he was verbally hamming it up for the audience, but I didn’t see much in his body language to suggest he was sincerely coming on to her in the studio. Granted, I didn’t watch the whole video, but that’s just my take on what I saw.
Regarding the sexism, I think Isaiah/Microsoft was putting up false gender distinctions all over the place. Implying that Facebook is mostly a girl’s thing is much more wrongheaded than suggesting that only guys play X-box.
I think he tried to show up and just be himself, and then the guys (but not as much the lady…) hosting the simply won’t let him. So he slipped into the character. And who wouldn’t? It’s fun.
I didn’t see him imply that Facebook was mostly a female thing. I saw him using FB to flirt with the lady that everyone in the room was pushing him to flirt with. I also think he was trying to break _away_ from that when he mentioned Xbox. That’s not such a bad thing, honestly. But the way he did it, implying that women don’t game, he could have done that better.
It wouldn’t have taken much, just an extra sentence. “you may not like this, but you might.” and then turn to the men to talk about Xbox. Honestly, it isn’t a huge deal, I’m _not_ saying that he’s a horribly sexist guy. But he did something sexist, and that needs to be pointed out so that the rest of us can avoid the behavior…