I kind of feel compelled to buy Kotex products now. Power of advertising, huh?
Be sure to read the backstory of the ad, and how three networks rejected it when it contained the word "vagina". Yeah, I know. How crazy to discuss the "v" word when you're advertising tampons. I'd totes reject that ad too, because I can't see the connection.
On pretty much the same note, these ads remind me of this Clear Blue Pregnancy Test commercial:
I, however, don't want to buy this one. Advertising (in general) still isn't that good.
Both the Kotex ads and the Clear Blue ad eschew what normally find their ways into tampon and pregnancy test ads. They're interesting. They're fun. They're engaging in a way women twirling around in white really very rarely are. And the tampon one even takes on the weird blue liquid factor.
It has been a long time since I posted a Sarah Haskins video. I'm a terrible person. But here's the latest one, which I (of course) love:
Crankosaur had a great post about this very thing a long while ago, and I think that between the two, both she and Sarah Haskins sum just about everything up.
I hate this commercial, and I'm pretty sure everyone else in the world should as well. Why? Well, watch it.
Let's see; it has a skinny woman who can't have that white chocolate macadamia nut cookie because she "caved" on eating that brownie yesterday. Her internal battle is between that bad craving, and her "good" self that really doesn't want to do anything that might jeopardize her skinniness. So what does she do? Well, she does what any smart woman who wants to be good does: she eats a piece of gum instead. Right, that isn't at all problematic.
The fact is, women should not feel like they've been bad for eating a brownie, or like they can't eat that cookie even though they've done some cardio. The fact is, self-denial in pursuit of bodily perfection does us no good. The fact is, this form of food-consumptive shaming has been going on for too long. We should not be congratulating the woman in the video for resisting her wish for a cookie. The woman in the video should not consider it a battle won that she not consume that cookie. This should not be held up as a triumph. It should not be held up as triumph because eating one cookie (or even 3) is not the end of the world or a negative action. Eating a sweet is not a bad thing, and it is continually depressing that women are taught and told to believe that it is. A while ago on Feministing, this very thing was highlighted by Courtney on her Ten Things I Could Do Without list; clocking in at number 5 was:
"Hearing my otherwise enlightened girl friends say they're "bad" because they just ate dessert."
Samhita responded with Ten Things Samhita Can Do Without. At number 3?
"Having my weight scrutinized by friends and family on a regular basis even though I am a grown ass woman and it is none of your business."
And it is present in the story told by Darla on We Are The Wave, when her mother gladly bought her diet microwave dinners to eat and took pride in her daughter's weight loss.
Weight loss or gain is only morally good or bad if we find something deficient in those who actually want to do that crazy thing called eating. Sure, there are people who overeat. But too often, we feel ashamed that we have these cravings at all, that we truly want that piece of chocolate or that brownie or that cookie. And that shame and that denial is not healthy. It does not lend to a healthy relationship with the food we eat, or the shape our bodies take. We shouldn't have to work out as penance for doing so, as though those extra fifteen minutes on a treadmill "make up" for that deviation the night before.
I eat. I personally don't eat a hell of a lot; and because of my hypoglycemia I have to be careful of my intake of sugar, lest I pass out and freak out those around me. I do eat what I want and generally when I want, though again the hypoglycemia leads to a somewhat more structured meal routine if I want to remain upright and cognizant. If I want a cookie, I have a cookie. I just make sure it's close enough to bed time so when I start getting dizzy I'm already laying down. I learned long ago that denying myself something I wanted - be it sweets or books or CDs - just meant that I would later binge on that very thing; which, by the way, is how I end up with things like Scott Weiland's solo CD. That still doesn't stop my some of coworkers from commenting about "how much" I eat and what I eat and how one day my metabolism will stop working for me and I'll have to be "good" like most of them. But I don't want to be. I want to be active; but I want to be active for the sake of being active, and not as a kind of Hail Mary when I do something like eat a piece of cake. And I want my cake, sans guilt. I want to not see commercials on my television set informing me that good girls and women chew gum after agonizing for dozens of seconds about whether or not they could rationalize actually eating something. I want a world in which women are considered good for actual acts of goodness, instead of self-denial. I want a world in which weight is no longer a measure of a person's moral worth. And I want a world in which people chew gum because they honestly want to, and not as a substitute for something else.
This is what appeared in my Sunday paper, and I have to say I'm more than slightly appalled. It isn't that I look to For Better Or For Worse for my feminist thought of the day, but I would be all the more pleased to not see this kind of "joke" anywhere ever again. Elly is a stay at home mom. So why can't John spend a good portion of the evening with the children? Why is he (and the other fathers/spouses) equated to a babysitter by the waitress? Why are John and the other fathers depicted as less likely to actively parent and more likely to view parenting as some chore designated to these ladies? Why is the demeaning of fatherly importance considered humorous?
The sad thing is, I have read a lot about the feminist movement devaluing fathers and husbands; but I disagree. This devalues fathers, this idea that mothers are and should always be the primary caregivers. The idea that women should cut their fun time short because otherwise they will have to "pay big time" for having left their children in the care of their spouse is much more insidious and not feminist in the least. It reinforces those gender roles of women being the caregiver and the primary parent and men being the breadwinner and the head of the household. And these are the gender roles and the divisions of labor that affect how women and men see the world and their places in it and also effect rulings in child custody battles. If the overriding idea of the land is that the woman is automatically the parent and the man has to be paid or bribed or have his time with his children forced upon him, then judges will rule accordingly.
Crankosaur recently wrote a post discussing men's doofishness around the house, and why it is not, as some would claim, an example of feminism run amuck but an example of the traditional societal norms rearing their ugly heads, saying:
The purpose of the Stupid Husband is not to put men down, but rather to put women down, to insult them, to reinforce a gendered division of labor.
It is also something Sarah Haskins lampoons in her most recent Target: Women, saying in response to the commercials "Everyone you live with is an idiot!" Which is pretty much the lesson commercials want us to take from them. Men, children, and teenagers can't clean up after themselves, which is why we women have to clean up after everyone without recognition and not fume over that whole "unequal gender divide in housework" statistics because men (and children... and teenagers) just can't help it. They are apparently genetically predisposed to doing stupid things like leaving the lid off of the blender and betting on how many paper towels it is going to take to clean up one of their spills. The feminist movement helped women gain access to and respect in areas in the public domain, but in too many cases it has not had the effect of legitimizing men's work inside the domestic sphere. And television, commercials, and comic strips help reinforce the notion that there are still areas that are almost solely women's work. That just by being one half of a reason someone is alive is no reason to actively and equally parent them, that making a mess does not mean having to clean it up, and that food preparation is a gendered art - unless, of course, they are chefs, in which case they will predominately be male.
That sort of reinforcement rankles. I would give anything to have more television shows and movies portray the man either cooking or cleaning or hanging out with his kids independent of his wife or girlfriend making him. I don't know how to make what is still considered a woman's domain, and thus beneath most male involvement, into something men will voluntarily do, will expect to be responsible for. I suspect it has to do with figuring out how to make women and men actually equal. From where I stand, one of the reasons the gender divide is still so great in terms of housework duty is because society devalues areas in which women have traditionally had greater influence. To call a man a woman is still a grave insult because to be a woman is undesirable; thus, to do chores traditionally designated to women is also undesirable. Commercials and television shows and comic strips like the one above only continue to make that assertion; we need to work harder at making the opposite one.
