Shirley A. sent in a Zellers sale flyer that is really interesting in light of the recent post we did on a Best Buy promotion. Whereas the Best Buy promotion was aimed directly at men, you’ll see that this flyer, for a store that sells household items instead of fancy gadgets, is aimed staunchly at women… who have to buy for their whole family and their home as well as themselves.
For more on gender and responsibility for the home:
First, check out this longitudinal data on how much housework wives and husbands do.
Then, for more examples of how women are responsible for the home, see this KFC advertisement offering moms a night off, this a commercial montage, Italian dye ad with a twist, women love to clean, homes of the future, what’s for dinner, honey?, liberation through quick meals, and my husband’s an ass.
See also these humorous illustrations: I love it when you talk clean to me, men do housework fantasy calendar, the househusbands of Hollywood, and porn for new moms.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Comments 21
Grizzly — November 18, 2009
It's interesting that when an ad is targeted directly towards men (eg the Best Buy ad), this is seen as a slight to women; but when an ad is targeted directly to women, this is also seen as a slight to women.
Why is there no commentary about how women are treated as the 'de facto' sex in the Zellers ad?
Otsy — November 18, 2009
Notice how the "for you" products are mostly beauty/physical appearance-oriented products (Olay, Covergirl, Herbal Essences, Venus). The "for your home" ones are all cleaning products of one type or another. Even the "for your family" category is strange, since it only includes pets, bathroom supplies, and shampoo (but a non-gendered shampoo, unlike Herbal Essences).
Even when including 3 "dimensions" of a consumer, they ad still manages to be incredibly flat and stereotypical.
ih — November 18, 2009
I always found gendering for grocery shopping to be very odd. Growing up, my dad always did the grocery shopping (even though mom generally did the cooking). I don't know. Buying food, toothpaste, and even deodorant never seemed particularly "female" to me.
Cecil — November 19, 2009
I think it is interesting how taking care of yourself, your family, and your home all requires products. They don't show products, but rather product and brand names. We are to assume what the product is for, and that all these things are necessary to take care of the respective areas of your life. How great is advertising that it convinces us that our lives cannot go on without buying something.
Agawa — November 19, 2009
I used to work for Zellers and in the back hiring rooms they had all sorts of posters showing the shopping cycles of the "Mom", and how to arrange things for "Mom". The customer was referred to as Mom (and pictured as a middle-aged white woman) in all of these posters. I only wished I'd had a camera on me since they were really creepy, and a clear example of how these companies think of their customers.
R. Nestor — November 19, 2009
This ad seem be a little less gendered if Zest and Head and Shoulders were listed under the "For You" section...although there's really no male "beauty"-aid equivalent to Covergirl and Olay to be sold, at least among products sold at most discount retailers, although this is beginning to change. I really just wanted to point out that all the brands in the ad are owned by Proctor and Gamble (which has obstensibly brokered special marketing deals with several retailers), and of course the conglomerate wanted to find a way to market all its different popular subsidiary brands, including make-up, in one ad. Furthermore, P&G, to my knowledge, doesn't manufacture, say, electronics or really anything that isn't a personal-care item, household aid, or food item, to my knowledge, so the "for you" and other sections of the ad can't be much but banal. These facts, though, certainly don't erase the sociological context of the ad.
Michelle — November 22, 2009
Statistically speaking, "who buys for the family" in the US is overwhelmingly women. For that reason, most market research for food and grocery items is done on samples composed of mostly, if not all, women. While sometimes the target of an ad can be interesting and/or revealing, this just isn't one of those times.