Under Armour

This advertisement for Under Armour displays hyper-masculinity and the construction of the violent White and Black male. The ad features two athletes who perform intense and violent training methods on a football field. The athletes are portrayed as cave-man like as they perform difficult tasks like sprinting with a weight chained to their back, running back and forth to knock footballs off a tee, and finally tackling a padded football player dummy. Judith Butler would describe this behavior as a performance of athletic hyper-masculinity. Their roles are performances of a certain identity. Jackson Katz describes this identity as the muscular “ideal” man. These identities span across races. In this ad, mostly black athletes are shown. In one scene, a black athlete is facing the camera with a stern look on his face. The camera slowly moves up his body as he shakes his over-sized muscles in slow motion. This scene is glorifying the violent male and the performance of hyper-masculinity that Katz and Butler describe. This advertisement expands the argument of my overall topic of how masculinity is constructed by advertisements. The ad is selling the lifestyle of being a violent male athlete. There are no references to the quality of Under Armor products. The athletes continually reference the intimidating “click, clack” sound that cleats make when walking on concrete before stepping onto a football field. This reference further supports the construction of a violent male athlete. Also, the spectacle of being a football player is an entire performance itself which relates to Butler’s argument.