This is another assignment from my writing class a few years ago: Describe a TV Advertisement. The ad is a little dated now. I believe it was running in the winter and spring of 2006.

Burger King has been running an ad for a massive hamburger called the Texas Double Whopper. The piece starts out with a young man eating lunch with his female companion in a somewhat hoity-toity restaurant. When his meal arrives, he snorts dersisvely, throws down his napkin, and bursts into song.

He exits the restaurant and continues his serenade out in the street. The sentiment of his words, which deal mostly with his disappointment with “girly” sized portions, is apparently felt by many men all over town. These sympathizers join him in the chorus, which we now understand is a parody of Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman.” As the number of gastronomically disenchanted vocalists swells with the music, we notice that many of these individuals do not appear to have any of the visible symptoms normally associated with small portions. This includes a pudgy minivan driving suburbanite, who, giddy with the sudden rush of bovine proteins in his bloodstream, decides to cast his perfectly serviceable vehicle over a bridge. Fortunately, it lands below in a passing dump truck. Hauling this vehicle is a rather beefy looking chap. Held just out of reach before him and taunting him onward are one of the burgers currently being praised by the impromptu choir. Interesting, this burger is held with a shovel at arms length by an attractive female. She appears to be distancing herself from the sandwich for fear that its inherent manliness may shrivel her ovaries. The commercial ends with hundreds of Whopper wielding rioters bellowing “HEAR ME ROAR!” This is apparently intended to be an analogy regarding lions and their well-documented love of hamburgers.

I appreciated the irony of the man complaining about “girly” food, then proceeding to consume more bovine growth hormone than is commonly dispensed on a Nebraska feedlot. Perhaps when he develops breasts, the girly food won’t seem so inappropriate.