Published: March 3, 2026

The cover image of this posts shows a very real delivery truck, with an ad on the side for a very real brand of cereal, titled “Man Cereal.” The deliberately aggressive masculine tagline reads “Cereal Got Its Balls Back” because, of course it does.

I saw this image originally on Bluesky, where it was quite rightfully being ridiculed. My initial response was to join in on the mockery, by pointing out, among other things, that this product really isn’t anything new.

The cereal bills itself as high protein, keto, and zero-sugar—and as I mentioned in my initial response, there are plenty of cereals and other foods already like this available in pretty much any store. I walk past at least 3–5 low- or zero-sugar, high-protein cereals every time I stroll down the cereal aisle at Costco. I even have a couple like it in my pantry, mainly just because they’re a healthier alternative to other cereals. My whole family eats them. (Even my wife. Can you believe it!?)

So naturally, I’m inclined to make fun a bit when things that really don’t need to be aggressively marketed to men are still aggressively marketed to men. From a pure marketing standpoint, I might concede a hyper-gendered design approach like this might make a certain amount of sense if you were operating in a traditionally feminine market—say, if you were selling makeup specifically targeted to men, for example—but this one is ridiculous because, uh, everybody has breakfast? If anything, I’d guess guys probably already eat more cereal than women do. This is a market where men are already very well represented.

So it’s ridiculous on that level, of course, and plenty of others. But nobody’s really surprised because we’ve already seen the overtly-male-gendered marketing trend permeate everything from wet wipes to soda to literal water.

On a different day, I might not have given it further thought.

But it struck me in a certain way today because of something that happened while I was taking my kid to school this morning.

My son’s in first grade. Yesterday, his entire class got to have a special movie day, because they’d all been doing so well in class.

For the movie, every kid got to bring a favorite stuffed animal from home.

My son’s favorite stuffed animal is one he named “Every Color,” because it’s a unicorn squishmallow with a rainbow mane. He chose that name back when he was…I don’t know, three years old, maybe? The name stuck, and Every Color has been his favorite since.

My son would pack Every Color for sleepovers and car trips. Any time he could only bring one stuffed animal with him, Every Color was the one. And though he’s old enough now that stuffed animals are more like toys than companions or things with emotional support value, Every Color still obviously holds a special place in his heart.

It’s his favorite. Every Color makes him happy.

That’s an unambiguously delightful, joyous, heartwarming thing.

My wife and I have tried our hardest to encourage our son just enjoy and explore whatever it is he likes, without reservation or worrying about what other people think. He loves sports, but he also loves the Frozen movies. He’s a very stereotypical rambunctious boy, who loves roughhousing and poop jokes…but he also loves pink and purple. He likes to paint his fingernails. He likes Taylor Swift, even though his friends don’t.

All of that is fine.

No, better than fine; that’s good.

As parents, we’re especially sensitive to this, because my wife and I both grew up being told, often and sometimes forcefully, what we could and couldn’t be; what was for “us” and what was for “them.”

We don’t want that for our kids. We want our children to be free to be whoever they are, whatever that means, without shame or judgment.

That really shouldn’t be a lot to ask.

Sadly, however, only in first grade, some of my son’s friends are already trying to tell him what’s acceptable for him, and what’s not.

On the way to school today, my son confided that one of his close friends and classmates had been talking about him behind his back. (Another friend told him so.) This original so-called friend was making fun of my son, specifically, because my son chose to bring his favorite unicorn stuffed animal, and likes the color pink. And unicorns and pink are, in the estimation of this little bully, “for girls.”

(I didn’t ask what stuffed animal this kid brought. I can only assume they must make all-black pickup truck stuffed animals for kids like him.)

My son had already confided this fact to my wife, before also confiding it to me. He’s obviously very bothered to be treated this way, and very rightly so.

My wife told him that friends who talk about you behind your back aren’t really your friends.

I told him everything’s for everyone, so saying stuff is “for girls” is stupid, and that kid’s mean.

My wife’s response would probably score more points among parenting experts, but in my defense: it is stupid and mean.

And that’s what bothers me: zoom out a little bit, and you can see this and Man Cereal are just different functions of the same machine; different expressions of the same root malignancy.

It’s stupid because, like I said, there is neither any need for these products, nor any shortage of what they actually are if you bother looking beneath the marketing. Cereals like this exist already. Zero-calorie soda existed already. Wet wipes existed already.

Fucking water existed already.

There is no actual need being met here; no hole in the market being served at long last and for the first time.

The only need these products meet is both psychological, and entirely manufactured: they give men social permission to buy them without the (almost entirely imaginary) fear being of considered “not a man.”

Not a man.

And it’s mean, because these products aren’t so much about what you are as what you aren’t.

They aren’t really for men, as much as they are for people who fear being perceived as not a man.

“Man Cereal” is, in deliberate subtext, “Not For Girls Cereal.” (If you doubt this, go read that tagline again.)

Because implicitly, the alternative to being a man is obviously worse.

You’re worse if you like things that are “for girls.”

Yesterday, even though my son is barely seven years old, toxic masculinity permeated his life and, perhaps permanently and irreparably, stole a small piece of his joy.

His peer, who my son considers a friend and deeply admires, made my son feel inferior because, in that friend’s narrow, small-minded view, my son did something that made him like a girl—which, that friend clearly believes, is bad.

If you look a little deeper, products like Man Cereal aren’t really for men at all; they’re actually for people who are so utterly insecure, so broken and lost, so tragically traumatized by the toxic masculinity they continue to espouse, that they feel they need at least the perception of peer approval before they can even do something so mundane as buy a goddamn box of cereal.

These products are for people whose sense of self has been so hopelessly shredded by this false sense of masculinity, and by the bullies who threaten to punish them if they dare to so much as exist outside its narrow boundaries, that they need a package on a shelf to call out to them, in ten words or fewer, “this is for you. Nobody will make fun of you if you spend your money on this.”

“Look! There aren’t even any colors on the box! Colors are for girls!”

I want better than that for my son.

I want better than that for all kids.

I want better than that for everyone.