For the mammas

[Im going home Donny]

SHOTGUN

Sylvie Hill

"I can't have a baby now, my outfit is all wrong!

According to 99 per cent of the television commercials featuring wives and mothers and laundry detergent or minivans, without high-waisted beige chinos, I'm nothing.

Add to that the absence of matching pastel knit co-ordinates and a delicate gold necklace to go with my precious diamond wedding band and what we've got here is a failure to assimilate.

I don't look like the woman Pledge-ing the oak dining room table, nor the one picking her husband's clothes off the floor in the Tide commercial. And FUCK if I aspire to being them. Granted, there's nothing wrong with doing my share of the housekeeping or helping my honey with his laundry. I just don't want to feel - and - look - like a fucking cliche while doing it, thanks.

Neither do you, apparently, and that's why you're still here. But if you happen to fit in with what conservative folks would call "proper" or "presentable" then read on, 'cause I'll need your help understanding why our society upholds lame-ass, cookie-cutter woman as role model wives and mothers.

There is an entire demographic of mothers-to-be out there who can't relate to these commercials. Show me a tattooed mother adjusting junior's car seat in the back of a '62 Plymouth Fury and I'll bet you a fiver they're a family that wouldn't call Kentucky Fried Chicken a "treat", or would rather a trip to Southern France than Disneyland.

Oh, there's my answer I guess, because from McDonald's to Chef Boyardee, industry and our economy thrive on certain mothers feeling insecure. Insecure about not feeding thier kid the right thing. Or driving the right TrailBlazer.

In one Minivan commercial, mothers worldwide are warned that unless little Joey can play video games in the back seat, he's going to abandon you for the mother next door who can give him that luxury.

There are enough things about motherhood that freak us out beyond an eight-pound greasy creature with eyeballs busting out of a vagina after nine months. Do we have to increase woman's worries by pummeling them with sanitized adverts of motherhood that they can't live up to? That seem to limit thier shopping experiance to Zellers and thier brain space to conformity?

Hands- and mops - down, the portrayal of vanilla moms with thier business-casual attire, uniformity and listlessness packages motherhood into something marketable, and we're buying it. How many of you are questioning it?

Any commercial you see nowadays is playing into stereotypes. Mothers & More ( www.mothersandmore.org ), an American non-profit membership organization that "cares for the caregiver", compiled a good list of them.

They are: Bonbon-Eating Mom (lazy T.V.watchers), Career-Crazed Mom(selfish careerist), Supermom(do it all), 24/7 Bliss Mom(always smiling), Martr Mom(there for everyone), Glam Mom(always looks good) and Domestic Goddess Mom(loves housework).

Have you been labeled one of these?

What also scares me, in addition to the message stereotypes send back to ourselves about how we've fallin short of some ideal, is the one they put across to bachelors. I fear the clinical version of wife and motherhood brainwashes gents into believing polished Gap girls are superior. The misconception that plain equals stable is not far behind.

The danger is serious. Far from me to link Swiffer commercials to post-partum depression and infanticide, especially when those ads promote how easy your life will be if you used these products, right? But, what happens when life doesn't get any easier for moms?

Well, Mom ends up fucking your boyfriend, like in Roger Michell's depressing British film The Mother, that's what happens. I rented the flick over the weekend, and what a warning call to all wives and mothers about the consequences of settling and losing your identity to a prescribed role.

Prescribed roles are safe. Like vanilla ice cream. It's plain and predictable until someone gives you a taste of the Rocky road with nougat and marshmallos and all hell breaks loose.

Colouring the vanilla image is not only the subject of many classics like Kramer vs. Kramer or The Hours, but a way to open up woman right here in our own backyard to more choice.

A girlfriend of mine would have gone nuts if she hadn't thought independantly of commonplace notions of what it means to be a parent.

Suburbs?

Screw it.

She recently took her eight-month-old daughter to Australia for a month. Next it's Peru for a couple of weeks. Another took her tot to Japan and taught English.

Lets see more examples of woman like this, who follow the beat of a different drummer and who have Youth Brigade's anthem "Punk Rock Mom" playing in the same CD changer as a little Kindermusik.

Yes, it takes courage to express yourself independantly from a world where J.Crew Mom next to you looks at you funny. For those of us sensitive-to-criticism-types, we sometimes can't shake the need for society's validation since we kinda live in it and all. But if Daddy can wear a chain wallet, why the hell can't mom?

And if all this talk of clothing doesn't matter, then I dare Pampers to throw Bif Naked into thier next diaper commercial.

To me, fuddy-duddy telemummies of TV land scream "white Christian married woman with affluent background". And while the whole fashion victim thing might be forgivable, there's no excuse for mistaking a capitalist theocrat for the perfect mother."

[lara]

Its so true...

Good find howler.

[snarfmaster C]

good read indeed.

joni mitchell's got some great songs on this theme.

i love joni.

[bouche]

beeferoni...that was one of my favourite lunches in the early eighties.

[mattm]

Though I can never be a mother I wanted to mention that khakis, minivans (not filled with drunken bums or music gear) and suburbs scare the crap out of me. I agree with that little article and hate the stupid sterotypes. Proper and presentable drive me up the wall.

[d_rawk]

Good read, Howler. Thanks.

Any commercial you see nowadays is playing into stereotypes

All commercials have always played into stereotypes. The stereotypes change, but the stereotyping doesn't. Think of the old black and white commercials for breakfast cereal or dish detergent. It certainly wasn't any more of an accurate depiction of women. They were 100% Ms. Cleaver.

[bradm]

The article that howler quoted originally appeared here:

http://www.ottawaxpress.ca/news/shotgun.aspx?iIDArticle=8739

Aloha,

Brad

[Im going home Donny]

yeah D-Rock..I thought exactly the same thing and its true about how nothings changed in regards to advertising having always played to stereotypes but thought the jist of the article still rocked.

Then I sarcastically laughed aloud thinking of the demographics that could be sold anti depressants and other mammas little helpers by portraying a hip, pissed off, pregger gal, blaring Weens - feeling like a big fat fuck -

haha...thankfully them advertisers will never get me on team sell pills....but man alive I could swing some sereous shit!

[d_rawk]

Ha! That's a good point. I've officially put your name on my 'potentially dangerous capitalists to be dealt with' list.

[Im going home Donny]

good call.