| Sumario: | The historical and cultural significance of eating meat (particularly beef) and driving (especially trucks) are both deeply intertwined with American masculinity and identity. This paper explores how contemporary advertisements for plant-based burgers, like the Impossible Whopper, and electric trucks, such as the Ford F-150 Lightning, reinforce hegemonic masculinity while promoting alternatives to traditional meat and fossil fuel consumption. Despite the pressing climate crisis and an increasing focus on sustainability, these ads typically emphasize rugged masculinity, with minimal acknowledgment of environmental issues. They present these products as extensions of established masculine norms, highlighting the complex relationship between consumer culture, gender, and sustainability in American society. This paper proposes advertising as a potentially powerful cultural space for imagining and representing sustainable futures, even as it documents how Impossible Foods and Ford failed to do so.
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