Elizabeth recently posted about an ad for Motrin that suggested that you should take pain medicine so as to keep walking in pain-inducing high heels. The message was, essentially, “Suffer for fashion, ladies! Motrin will help!” I wanted to discuss, also, this second ad in their series (found here) and an anonymous commenter egged me on:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO6SlTUBA38[/youtube]
They start off saying that how mothers make decisions about how to carry their infants according to what is in style (“Wearing your baby seems to be in fashion”). They then point out that what is currently in fashion is painful for mothers. But, of course, moms are going to do it anyway, because the sacrifice is for the child (“It’s a good kind of pain, it’s for my kid”). But also about fashion! And about how in-fashion it is to be a mom! (“Plus it totally makes me look like an official mom”).
The ad trivializes motherhood (threatening to reduce it to fashion), equating it, in a sense, to the high heels in the other ad. At the same time, it legitimizes suffering in the service of your child, which reinforces the ideology of intensive mothering that has ramped up the must-haves and must-dos of mothering like never before in human history.
The good news is that Motrin pulled this ad campaign and has apologized after bloggers took them to task.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 6
Jan Andrea — November 19, 2008
Thanks for addressing this :) I'm a woman who's also a babywearing mom (the latter is not my primary identifier -- it irks me somewhat how many women on parenting forums have IDs like "Mom21gr8kid" or "TaylorsMama" or the like, as though they don't have any other identity, but I digress...) and this ad just felt stupid to me. I wasn't *offended* as such; I can see that they were trying to be cute and tongue-in-cheek about it, but wow, did they ever miss the boat!
Babywearing International did a great followup letter to Motrin: http://www.babywearinginternational.org/pages/motrinresponse.php
Grump Girl — November 19, 2008
I thought this was a condescending and patronizing way to portray motherhood. especially that assertion at the end, that all mothers are "crazy."
you know, they could've just said, thank you mothers, for doing all that you do, and here, take some motrin for a little help.
Andrew Ferguson — November 19, 2008
"The message was, essentially, 'Suffer for fashion, ladies! Motrin will help!'"
I thought their message was closer to 'So you've already decided to suffer for fashion, ladies? Motrin will help!'
"The ad trivializes motherhood (threatening to reduce it to fashion)"
I take it you've never been to Yaletown or Kitsilano in Vancouver? Motherhood was reduced to a fashion statement in west coast yuppie neighborhoods a couple years ago.
Scott — December 18, 2009
Eh, as ineffective as pulling advertisements actually is in changing the way advertisements are made regarding these sorts of things, at least Motrin had the good sense to do it. I can think of a few other pharmaceutical corporations which might just say "We're sorry we hurt you, maybe you should take more of our painkiller to dull it."
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Staceyjean — December 18, 2011
I dont think the add referring to fashion in the sense of skinny jeans and and the A-Line but more like the psychology/medical fashion that in the early 80's told parents that babies should be put to sleep on their backs and then in the late 80's told parents that babies should be put to sleep on their chest and then in the 90's started the "back to sleep" campaign saying again that parents should put their babies to sleep on their backs. Nobody is putting their baby to sleep on their backs so that they look fashionable and few (if any) moms are wearing their babies to look cute. However the credibility and capability of young moms is always questioned and every young mom wants to look like they know what they are doing so that they don't get tormented by their mother in law.
The add displays alot of different information and perspectives in 43 seconds. Taken at its meat is there really a mom here who is going to say that they have never had their back, joints, muscles ache? And its advertisement who really cares that much?