On second thought, this might not be the brave step forward that the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority is making it out to be.

Sure, the industry watchdog is warning that it will be cracking down on ads that feature stereotypical gender roles — mom cleaning the house, dad making a mess of the house — but are we, like, talking about two genders here?

As Twitchy reported, the Television Academy handed Bill Nye an Emmy nomination for the “Sexual Spectrum” episode of “Bill Nye Saves the World,” featuring the classic, “My Sex Junk.” So is the U.K. only going to police ads for their depiction of “male” and “female” roles? That’s awfully regressive.

Although moves like this one generally grow out of a perceived need to show women doing more outside the home, men look to “benefit” as well — the ASA, it seems, will also be on the lookout for ads showing dad bumbling around the house and being generally clueless.

Jezebel picked up on the story and added the sad note, “This kind of self-awareness is admirable, but will likely never, ever, in a billion years, happen in the United States!”

Honestly, we wouldn’t really care if it did catch on in the U.S.; mostly, we’re just happy not to have an Advertising Standards Authority forcing it on us.

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The rabbit hole goes even deeper, though. British Telecom reports that “the ASA’s move follows last month’s announcement of a Unilever-led alliance of major brands and organisations aiming to end gender stereotyping in advertising.”

And that effort, which goes by the name of the “Unstereotype Initiative” — “a new global Alliance set to banish stereotypical portrayals of gender in advertising and all brand-led content”— is sponsored by UN Women and also includes Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Mattel, Twitter, AT&T, and others. So, it looks like the good ol’ USA is participating after all, albeit voluntarily for now.

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Tags: advertisingAdvertising Standards AuthoritybanGenderstereotypesunited kingdom