Mr Muscle will not take a Diet Coke break

Women have long fought against sexism but men are just as much victims of gender stereotyping

Walk with me, if you will, as I share my idea for the film script that is going to help me crack Hollywood. It’s a fresh spin on Justice League, the movie about a superhero team based on comic favourites such as Spiderman and Cyborg. Except my version won’t feature Batman or Flash Gordon, but rather the likes of Nanette Newman during the heady days of her turn as the Fairy Liquid housewife. Throw in Oxo mum and that scary woman who used to sing about shake and vac-ing her carpet, and my oestrogen-charged blockbuster can’t possibly fail.

At the very least, it could serve as a fitting memorial to all those domestic superwoman stereotypes soon to be laid to rest by the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP). This organisation, which sets the advertising industry’s rules, is planning a crackdown on the way men and women are portrayed in adverts.

But here’s the Oxo-flavoured beef: most complaints about gender stereotyping usually bemoan the way women are portrayed. The weary mum freighted with school-run anxiety and piles of washing-up. Or the cheery housewife with the toothpaste smile putting tea on the table for her grateful husband and 2.4 kids. How can this be happening, shriek feminists, when we have a female prime minister and the head of the supreme court is a woman for the first time?

Yet there’s nothing but silence from the smouldering bra-burners when it comes to the way our advertisers treat men. And it can be outrageous. For every Milk Tray man, there are hundreds of hapless dads incapable of locating the washing machine or boiling an egg. Men are constantly depicted as hopeless cases, fixated by DIY, bamboozled by the dishwasher, and too obsessed with the football to care about what the children are up to.

That is just not a fair reflection of reality. In these enlightened times, many fathers far exceed the cliché of the ineffective new man. The competing pressures of two working parents means that most dads have had to become domestic gods, whether they want to or not. But many enjoy the chance to spend time with their little ones or turn in a showstopping salmon en croute. One poll found that a third of men do everyday cooking and teach their children in the process. Nearly a fifth of men would do most of the childcare if they also had access to six weeks’ paternity leave paid at 90 per cent of their salary, according to Gorvins Solicitors.

Such outdated stereotyping of men does women no favours either – if we buy in to the idea that they’re hopeless around the house, it only means we’ll continue to do the majority of the chores and childcare.

And what example does it set our offspring, especially when it infects children’s TV, too? In the enormously popular Peppa Pig, for example, Daddy Pig may seem to be a hardworking chap who wants to look after his family. Yet he is all too regularly treated as a cretinous incompetent and an object of fun. When he starts exercising and tells Peppa that he’s “naturally fit”, she fat-shames him with a corrosive response: “You don’t look very fit – your tummy is big!”

The fact is that men suffer just as much, if not more, from stereotyping than women. Yet in a stroke of counter-intuitive sexism, the unspoken view is that men can take it.

The silence was deafening, for example, when the Diet Coke man flexed his pecs while taking five minutes off from his window cleaning job, even though his routine drink break reduced the spectating typing pool to dribbling wrecks. This kind of sexual objectification was dismissed as a bit of a laugh. But imagine the outcry had the fulcrum of the campaign been a bunch of hod carriers wolf-whistling a passing tootsie. Men have body image issues, too.

Sometimes the stereotypes can reflect reality. There will always be high-flying women who still want to maintain control in the kitchen (or my second office, as I tell my husband). Equally, many men are reduced to default domestic helplessness because women prefer to do things “their way”.

But when they’re unfair, change has to apply equally.

Meanwhile, I’m working on my movie script, which I’m thinking of calling Mr Muscle. A reference to brawny super power or a great way to clean the bathroom? Ladies and gentlemen, take your pick.